Month: June 2024

For the typos in the piece on the election but in the moment they are not so important as what has to be said.

June 27, 2024:

Joe Biden decisively lost the 2024 election in the debaclebate tonight in Atlanta.

No need to dwell on all the reasons. Suffice it to say neither of the CNN characters asked this simple most basic question, “Mr. Trump, you lost the 2020 election, will you admit that?”

It should have been the first thing asked of Trump and the last thing asked of him. It was never asked.

Its absence is but one of dozens of moments Bash and Jake did not do their jobs and Trump did his.

If you have ever counseled a candidate on how to deal with the press/media in any forum you know that you tell them this, you drill them in this:

Do not answer the question you were asked; answer the question you want to answer or answer no question. Acknowledge the question then ignore it and say what you want.

Trump did it all night and as always got away with dozens of outright lies. Lying is all he does.

Anyone could have told anyone else that Trump would work to come across as calm and reasonable; that he would defy and deny the media take about who and what he is.

He did it and got away with it, especially in comparison to Biden’s enormous failure and clear old age fragility,

Trump did that, lying all the way, but he gets away with it all because by comparison Joe Biden looked and sounded like the vacant, confused, old uncle you have to visit at the nursing home.

Dem candidates across the nation will be running and ducking for cover because beside losing the presidency this night, Joe Biden might well have lost the U.S. Senate, even the House.

So what to do?

If Biden is the candiate he, and perhaps Democrats, will lose decisivley. The next wave of polls will likely show Trtump up 6, even 8 points. That is how it will come out unless?

Unless Biden has a sensible moment and a good dose of self-appreciation, honesty, and a lot of humility, and agrees to get out.

It was the conclusion of everyone with whom I texted tonight during this debacle within the first 10 minutes that he needs to admit this and leave the field.

But then who? And there are a dozen good. possibilities. The governors of Califonia, Michigan, Illinois, Dem senators up for election this year like Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who can be replaced because a replacement can win; but not those who can’t be replaced because only they can win in their states like Sherrod Brown in Oho. Or are you thinking of Michele Obama (dream on, she hates politics)

And of course Kamala Harris – but is she or isn’t she a problem? Well on CNN later she made a vital, coherent, sharp, focused defense of the president, as she addressed the issues and unmaksed Trump with all the fervor and articutelness the President lacked entirely.

She is the best prepared Dem to replace him and has learned an enormous amount the past three and a half years, emerging as able and qualified.

So she could logically be the choice? Yes, except – except the country juist does not like her and there just isn’t time, there is no time to change that. There just is not time for that.

Then who? Who Like Andy Kim in New Jersey, but on a much larger stage is daring enough to step forward, in this instance before Juy 4, to claim the prize.

Who is there to say right now, within days who will dare to say, “I am ready and I ask the president to stand aside and let us Democrats decide on a different nominee to finish the job he has so briliiantly done to this moment, this crossroad in American nationhood and democracy.”

Someone must.

There is only one place now that can be decided and that is at the convention, which suddenly gets very real, changing from a predictable political show into an historicmoment and opportunity.

Let us remember that Abraham Lincoln won his nomination on a seemingly audacious and spontanous eruption of enthusaism for him, for the man from Illinois, which just happened to start in the galleries filled with native Illinoisans at the convention inside the Wigwam in Chicago.

Let us recall that a sudden outburst of cries of “We Want Wilkie” swept through the Republicans in Philadelphia in the summer oif 1940 as they nominated Wendell Wilkie.

Let us recall that no one really knew for sure whether FDR was serious about a 3rd term until a distant voice started and led a chant for him that rose and spread across the delegations gathered in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention in mid-1940.

Where did those cries to renominate FDR originate? In the basement of the convention hall over a loudspeaker manned by Chicago’s head of public works, a loyal party man. It swept away the opposition and swept FDR to a third nomination and 3rd term.

Could that happen now, in this world? We may find out. It may indeed be very necessary that we do.

This can happen. If it does not, if Biden refuses to go and fights for renomination in the face of party despair and a real movement to replace him, it will be a political catastrophe.

If it is opened to the convention without Biden there will be three or four real candidates – but they need to be in the field by the end of the first week in July, giving them perhaps a month.

Whoever dares tosteps forward, to supercharge politics first will become the favorite.

JFK’s remembrance is largely myth and his real moment and importance as president is exaggerated and understood now to have been far less than credited in his moment and in his sudden, tragic death But this is a moment like his memory.

This is a Kennedyesque moment.

Can the right person step foward to capture the faith of her or his party right now? Could it?

Yes. But it is a gamble with long odds and there are no more than 10 days for that to begin.

It will be a lot easier if Joe Biden can be convinced he has to withdraw. Who can convince him? In the end from all we know that is only his family and principally Jill Biden. Would they? Would she? Will they? Will she?

How would any of us know? We don’t.

Otherwise? Otherwise none of us can imagine this country, this nation anymore. And if Trump wins and has the Congress and already has the court, as he does, then this nation as we have known it will end. It will.