Now What?

“I’m angry,” Martha said this morning. “I’m angry that this is the choice. I think his government has done a great job but I’m angry we don’t have a better choice.”

Needless to say, I agree. Thursday night’s debate was an unmitigated disaster for President Joe Biden. He appeared ancient, disoriented and, at times, incoherent. The question now turns to: what are we supposed to do?

At least right now, it does not appear that Biden is willing to drop out, proclaiming yesterday at a North Carolina rally:

THE PRESIDENT:  Folks, I don’t walk as easy as I used to.  I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to.  I don’t deba- — debate as well as I used to.  But I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth.  (Applause.) 

I know — I know — I know right from wrong.  (Applause.)  And I know how to do this job.  (Applause.)  I know how to get things done.  (Applause.)  And I know like millions of Americans know: When you get knocked down, you get back up.  (Applause.)

A great message, and it heartened his supporters to see Biden up there, in front of a crowd, looking competent and strong. But here’s the problem: he’s not.

That question was settled on Thursday. Our president was incapable of speaking extemporaneously, at night, in a controlled environment for ninety straight minutes. He could not form sentences, could not string together paragraphs that were not halting or strained. He could not combat Trump’s chocolate fountain of lies. And, despite the entreaties from Barack Obama, Lawrence O’Donnell, and others, I refuse to chalk this up to a “bad debate.”

See that thing right up there with the sand in it? That thing is telling us we’re fucked.

For Biden, this debate was about answering a single, basic question: “Are you up for another four years of this job?” He convincingly answered that question in the negative. He is not. Not now, and certainly not two, three, or four years from now.

The rally yesterday only proved that he can speak from a Teleprompter in the middle of the day to an audience of supporters. That’s not good enough. If this campaign wants to demonstrate that the Biden we saw at the debate was a fluke, they need to get his wrinkled ass out of the White House, in front of tough audiences asking tough questions for at least as long as the debate lasted. He needs to do this often. Call them Biden Town Halls or whatever, but America needs to see a vigorous Joe Biden earning back the job I believe he lost on Thursday.

He needs to hold frequent press conferences. He needs to hold public events with world leaders. The burden of proof is now on him to demonstrate that he is up to the job of being President of the United States because right now, the Republicans’ claim that he’s too old to do the job appears correct.

My best guess, though, is that we won’t see any of these things happen because I doubt his own people trust Biden to hold events of that sort. If they did, we would’ve been seeing him doing this kind of thing for the previous four years. As Michael Shear of the New York Times noted last year, “In the 100 years since Calvin Coolidge took office, only Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan held as few news conferences each year as the current occupant of the Oval Office.”

That didn’t trouble me before. It troubles the hell out of me now.

I do not currently believe Joe Biden is capable of fielding tough questions from the press for more than a few minutes at a time. The reason I don’t believe that is because, on Thursday, Joe Biden demonstrated that he is incapable of fielding tough question from the press for more than a few minutes at a time. And if I – a bang-the-drum-lefty - don’t believe Biden’s competent, what are swing voters going to think?

Being President of the United States is a full-time job. I don’t mean 40 hours a week. I mean all the hours in a week. (I don’t know how many that is, and what am I going to do - calculate it? Grow up.) Yes, all presidents are surrounded by staff who handle much of the workload, and I trust the experience of Biden’s team to get him through. But that’s not enough for me to feel good about my vote. When Biden ran as a caretaker president, I did not expect he meant that he would be the one who needed caretakers.

Look, I’m going to vote for Joe Biden. I will vote for a cardboard box filled with wet socks if it means keeping Donald Trump out of the White House. A comatose Joe Biden is preferable to an alert Donald Trump. But I, and millions of other Democratic voters, shouldn’t have to make that choice. We shouldn’t be forced to vote for somebody who just demonstrated they are not up for the job now, and whose actuarial trend line doesn’t inspire a great deal of confidence regarding the future.

This election is not about Joe Biden. I’m sorry, but it’s not. It’s about protecting the Republic from another four years of chaos, abuse, and lies. It’s about protecting American democracy from somebody who will have no qualms up blowing it up if he believes it serves his interests. It’s about holding back the Christian Nationalists Trump has aligned himself with. It’s about preserving our institutions and our alliances. It is not about Joe Biden’s ego. I am not going to offer an opinion about who should replace Biden at the head of the ticket. I don’t know. But the stakes are too high and the world too perilous for the guy I saw on Thursday.