When The Well-Meaning Obstruct The Political Way
You know, I had blogging plans. I was going to write a piece about Trump’s first 100 days, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers’ clashes with Border Czar Tom Homan, the arrest and trial of Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan, among many others….
But the news cycle once again overwhelmed me. By the time I understood one issue, others sprung up, multiplying like bacteria.
I once again deliberated on which topic to cover- there are so many, by the Nine! (hopefully players of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered enjoy the reference….)
Finally, a story arose above the others, halting my racing mind and spurning my idle fingertips.
Axios obtained exclusive recordings of President Biden’s interviews with special counsel Robert Hur. The Biden White House released the transcript but not the audio last year. In those recordings, Axios notes:
“The audio from two hours-long sessions appear to validate Hur’s assertion that jurors in a trial would have viewed Biden as ‘a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’” In particular, Axios highlighted how Biden confused the date of his son Beau Biden’s death, a tragedy that inspired the memoir Promise, Me Dad.
I find these revelations so important because they partly explain Trump’s success and Kamala Harris’s failure in the 2024 election. They provide extra context for what we already knew: Biden rarely appeared before the media compared to his predecessors. His former boss Obama had four times as many and Trump had three times as many ‘press conferences and media interviews’ in the same timeframe.
Throughout Biden’s term, various explanations were offered, but now it seems clear that Biden’s handlers and family wanted to limit his public appearances. After the first debate on June 27th, 2024, it was hard to argue in good faith that Biden had the stamina to be the chief executive. The floodgates exploded. Prominent DNC donor and actor George Clooney didn’t mince words with his essay in The New York Times: “I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee.” A new book alleges that Biden didn’t even recognize Clooney at a fundraiser. By late July, 2/3 of Democratic voters wanted a new nominee.
At the same time the Democrats were hiding the extent of their nominee’s mental decline, they painted Trump as a threat to democracy itself. Biden was the guardian of democracy and Trump was the pillager of it, petulant and enraged he lost in 2020.
After a brutal, unprecedented pressure campaign, Biden did drop out. Then Harris made January 6th a campaign centerpiece. Harris, a California liberal, campaigned with GOP cast out and daughter of the former vice president, Liz Cheney. There was and is almost nothing that the two women agree on politically, aside from the fact that transition of power must be respected and a dislike of Donald Trump. Harris closed her campaign with a speech at the Ellipse in Washington, where Trump spoke on January 6th, 2021. One of her central arguments was that we should never return to the events of that day.
While January 6th was disturbing to many, the Democrats ceded the moral high ground about democracy with their machinations to keep Biden as the nominee. I’m not saying a violent mob is equivalent to lying to the American people about a politician’s condition. However, the two behaviors indicate a disrespect and disregard for the basis of democracy, its meaning in the original Greek: rule by the people.
I suspect many right-wingers, conservatives and independents who would have voted for Harris were bothered by how long Biden stayed in and what it took to get him out. Why would a party who wanted a declining old man as the most powerful person in the world be the best stewards of democracy? How could a party coronate its Vice President, whose presidential campaign a few years earlier sputtered, and still claim to be the democratic option?
The optics weren’t great. In a majorly divided country, you need to maximize every advantage. The election was close as I’ve pointed out: Trump won the popular vote and multiple swing swings within a couple points, including Wisconsin.
Imagine if Biden had publicly said he would not run for re-election early, saying something like: “I’ve had a great career. In my half century of political life, I’ve achieved my wildest dreams, including becoming president. But now it’s time to let another generation take the reins. With democracy on the line, the stakes couldn’t be higher.”
The Democrats could have had a robust primary process, allowing democracy to proceed and demonstrating they were the safeguards of democracy. Instead, they had a hasty confirmation of the Vice President, whom President Obama was allegedly unsure could beat Trump.
By holding onto someone who wasn’t able, despite how well meaning, to be Commander In Chief, the Democrats help gift Trump an improbable 2nd term.
Yet another chapter in the ever-expanding tome: Democracy Is Messy.
Let’s hope we learn from it.