I’m suffering from Joe Biden whiplash.
I wanted him to run in 2016. Had he done so and secured the nomination — I ‘m not so sure he would have prevailed over Hillary Clinton — I’m confident there never would have been a Trump presidency.
By 2020 I had moved on. I liked Pete Buttigieg and to a lesser extent Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker. But once he secured the nomination, though I had concerns about his age, I was more than fine with Joe. In fact, he may have been the only Democrat who could have defeated Trump that year.
I thought he got off to a good start as President, but then it felt like he became captive to the hard-left activist wing of his party. I thought he went much farther than necessary with his $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill and that helped fuel the inflation that became his biggest problem.
My discouragement with Biden deepened when it became clear he was going to run for a second term when he had promised to be a bridge, healing the wounds left by Trump and setting up a successor to move forward.
And all of that reached a low point with his debate performance a couple of weeks ago.
But then last night he seemed like the old Biden. His performance at a rare press conference exceeded my expectations. I actually think that this morning other pundits are not giving him enough credit for how well he did. Yeah, he misspoke here and there, but Biden has always been prone to that. Overall, he looked and sounded good for an 81-year old guy. He was energetic without coming off as defiant or belligerent and he showed mastery of policy, especially foreign policy.
Combine that with his dogged determination to stay in the race and I’m starting to think he’ll be the nominee after all. To be clear, that is NOT a prediction. I have not a clue how this is going to turn out. But as the days go by and his performances improve there’s a point where it really does become too late for any other result.
He did make one comment last night that I’m surprised nobody has seized on. He said that his delegates were free to vote for anyone they wanted. I don’t believe that’s technically true. My understanding is that they’re pledged to him on the first ballot and, in fact, they aren’t free to vote for just anybody. But by saying what he did, did he inadvertently free them?
In any event, what we’ve got here is the tension between two positive human traits: tenacity and selflessness. On the one hand, I have to give Biden credit for pure determination. Not giving up is an admirable thing. But on the other hand, it’s also noble to fall on your sword when it’s clear that that’s what’s best for the greater good. Biden seems to think it’s not a choice. He seems to believe that by hanging in there he is doing the right thing for the greater cause because only he can beat Trump.
I think he’s wrong about that. But I’m not at all sure that, come the Chicago convention. he won’t be my party’s nominee after all.
Art Fair in Madison and Hodag Country Festival in Rhinelander this weekend. What’s not to love?
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
h/t to the Babylon Bee.
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Regarding pledged delegates, I think Biden was merely stating a fact. DNC rules say, “All delegates to the National Convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.”
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This issue will never go away. Republicans will flood all visual media between now and the election with videos of Biden before, on, and after the debate. They’ll show him stumbling, losing his train of thought, introducing Zelensky as Putin, and on and on. As one of our senators recently stated, what we saw on June 27 cannot be unseen.
Democrats running for reelection in competitive races are extremely concerned that Biden’s presence at the top of the ticket will cause them to lose their seats, and guarantee that Democrats will lose both the House and the Senate. Even if by some outrageous miracle Biden was able to win the presidency, he would face a hostile Republican Congress and get absolutely nothing done. So much for his legacy.
To solve the many problems that face us, Democrats must absolutely take the presidency, the House, and the Senate. That is a hard and fast requirement that Biden and even some Democrats seem to forget. We need to be able to pass legislation or we are literally dead. Democrats can win the trifecta only if their candidate for President generates excitement across the board and has the coattails for Democratic candidates for Senate and House seats to ride to victory.
Democrats need the best ticket that they can assemble between now and the August Democratic Convention, and Biden cannot be on that ticket!
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