By James Moore
“Time is the school in which we learn, Time is the fire in which we burn.” – Delmore Schwartz, Poet.
I had feared the debate was going to be a signal moment that showed President Biden’s age, but even my grimmest visions did not live up to what happened on CNN. My greatest worry is that he would have a Mitch McConnell moment and freeze up like the Senate Minority Leader. The president had no energy or voice, his head was overfilled with facts, and he did not seem cognitive enough to confront the lies of Trump. I have made the argument here before that Mr. Biden ought to take credit for his many accomplishments and then step aside to support a new Democratic successor. Such a noble act would add to what history might proclaim as the best one-term president ever produced by the United States.
And there is still time to withdraw and let his party find a new nominee. I struggle to understand how the people who work with the President on a daily basis do not speak out and politely urge him to consider the country’s future rather than his second term. We are all aware that he believes he is the best candidate to defeat the demented Trump, but after the debate I think there will be a broad consensus that he is not up to the critical task at hand. There were multiple chances for him to call Trump a liar in their putative debate, but he did not recognize a single one on abortion, January 6, covid, or any other lie that spewed from the previous president’s mouth. Biden looked, in fact, like a disaffected and lost old man, which, I’m afraid, he is.
Like most presidential debates, this one wasn’t really a debate. When Biden lost his way and ended an early answer with, “We beat Medicare,” I suspect much of the Democratic Party and the electorate moved on to wonder who is next, or to plan which country they were going to move to after Trump took office again. CNN, once more, committed a form of malpractice by eliminating fact checking. The network’s future might be more grim than the President’s. If Biden had been even slightly more cognizant of Trump’s lies, he would have turned and challenged them, but, as a basic function, moderators ought to refute untruths with facts. Why CNN management made such a decision is not justifiable, regardless, because it turned the entire event into another Trump lie-athon. He might as well have been on a podium somewhere down in Dixie, explaining how he’s the greatest president for Blacks since Abraham Lincoln, and maybe he’s done even more than Honest Abe.
Nonetheless, if American voters have no choices other than two elderly white men, one vile, pathological, a convicted felon and adjudicated as a rapist, the other an octogenarian with a good heart but fading mental capabilities, then our country has fallen farther down the poop sluice than even the cynics suggest. By keeping the incumbent president as its candidate, the Democrats almost certainly assure a Trump assault on our democracy, and a destabilizing world. The American electorate is not overflowing with intellect when Trump got just over 74 million votes in 2020. Although Biden defeated him by 7 million, it is probably a safe assumption that millions of those melted away after the CNN debacle. Even if they don’t vote for Trump, their absence from the electorate will make this significantly closer than circumstances might suggest.
There was a clear and demonstrable strategy by Biden’s campaign team to have him focus on issues. His head was bubbling over with numbers and policies and he had trouble articulating where they all fit in his record. The simpler approach would have been to just attack Trump. Call him a convicted felon every time he addressed the man, accuse him of planning a coup and putting the entire country at risk, tell him there is a public record of him being a sexual predator and a racist, explain that he was so foolish on covid that he wanted people to inject bleach for a cure, and he kept arguing, “We expect this to go away in weeks, but maybe days, when the weather warms up;” instead, millions died. There was so much material to hammer Trump with that it is astounding Biden, even if he is addled by age, did not think clearly enough to throw the stones provided by Trump’s record.
The Democrats need to move quickly and concertedly to replace Biden. He is still rational enough to be convinced that his debate performance ruined his chances at reelection and the country cannot well endure another Trump term. Keeping Trump away from the White House has motivated Mr. Biden in this campaign and if he understands he no longer has the power to accomplish such a goal, he, logically, ought to refuse his party’s nomination. The Democrats have rules to allow floor nominations at their conventions, which involve delegates circulating petitions to get signatures to nominate a candidate. A percentage of delegates in attendance is required, and then nominating speeches are allowed and the candidate must formally accept, either with a speech or in writing.
It’s complicated, though. If Biden declines to run further, the traditional assumption is his vice president becomes the party’s choice of successor. No rules dictate such a conclusion, but that will be the expectation. The Democrats are not likely to unite very well behind Kamala Harris. Her tenure has been low profile and she has suffered great criticism, much of it justified. To sideline her, however, for Gov. Gavin Newsom of California or Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan or even Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland, is likely to create disaffected black voters. Moore, a charismatic black governor, would mitigate some of that on any ticket for the Democrats, but marginalizing a Black female VP will be bad optics. Other potential replacements are Sen. Cory Booker, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and former Congressman Adam Kinzinger. Democrats have a deep bench. The options are not simple to choose, but a change of the ticket is essential, or Trump wins.
And America loses.
This article was originally published on Texas to the world.
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James Moore is the New York Times bestselling author of “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,” three other books on Bush and former Texas Governor Rick Perry, as well as two novels, and a biography entitled, “Give Back the Light,” on a famed eye surgeon and inventor. His newest book will be released mid- 2023. Mr. Moore has been honored with an Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his documentary work and is a former TV news correspondent who has traveled extensively on every presidential campaign since 1976.
He has been a retained on-air political analyst for MSNBC and has appeared on Morning Edition on National Public Radio, NBC Nightly News, Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, CBS Evening News, CNN, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Hardball with Chris Matthews, among numerous other programs. Mr. Moore’s written political and media analyses have been published at CNN, Boston Globe, L.A. Times, Guardian of London, Sunday Independent of London, Salon, Financial Times of London, Huffington Post, and numerous other outlets. He also appeared as an expert on presidential politics in the highest-grossing documentary film of all time, Fahrenheit 911, (not related to the film’s producer Michael Moore).
His other honors include the Dartmouth College National Media Award for Economic Understanding, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television News Directors’ Association, the Individual Broadcast Achievement Award from the Texas Headliners Foundation, and a Gold Medal for Script Writing from the Houston International Film Festival. He was frequently named best reporter in Texas by the AP, UPI, and the Houston Press Club. The film produced from his book “Bush’s Brain” premiered at The Cannes Film Festival prior to a successful 30-city theater run in the U.S.
Mr. Moore has reported on the major stories and historical events of our time, which have ranged from Iran-Contra to the Waco standoff, the Oklahoma City bombing, the border immigration crisis, and other headlining events. His journalism has put him in Cuba, Central America, Mexico, Australia, Canada, the UK, and most of Europe, interviewing figures as diverse as Fidel Castro and Willie Nelson. He has been writing about Texas politics, culture, and history since 1975, and continues with political opinion pieces for CNN and regularly at his Substack newsletter: “Texas to the World.”
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