Dark Brandon…Too Late and Aimed at the Wrong Party

Joe Biden is demonstrating an increasing willingness to become the most loathed man in America.

It will not be easy to wrest that title from Donald Trump, but Biden, turning all the feistiness that he failed to show in his woeful debate performance on his fellow Democrats, might well win that contest, likely the only thing he will win come November. 

To respond to his critics in the party, many of whom have expressed love for him and clearly agonized over asking him to step down, Biden launched an incredibly callous attack.  “I’m getting so frustrated by the elites. Now, I’m not talking about you guys, but by the elites in the party. They know so much more. But if any of these guys don’t think I should run, run against me. Go ahead. Announce.  Announce for president. Challenge me at the convention.”

The  “elites?”  James Carville is an elite?   Michael Moore is an elite?  What is Biden?  The common man?  He was all too happy to sop up money from the elites, fawn on the elites, host the elites at the White House, and grant the elites special access when they were writing big checks and fawning on him right back.  To Biden, that was merely good judgment; now that they’ve stopped, it is betrayal.

He then went on to castigate his detractors for not uniting behind him…for the good of the party and the country.  “It is time to come together, move forward as a unified party, and defeat Donald Trump.”  If he were so concerned about defeating Trump, he would have at least taken their criticisms more seriously. 

But he was right about one thing.  It is indeed time for a unified Democratic Party to move forward with one strong voice to defeat Trump.  The question is whether the voice should be his. 

Biden expresses a unshakeable confidence that it is, although that sentiment seems to have been inspired mostly by family, those reliant on him for employment, and the small army of sycophants who attach themselves to politicians like iron filings to a magnet.  Happy to heed those self-serving whispers, Biden insists on portraying himself as a candidate powerful and vibrant enough to win a close election and then lead the country for another four years.

But, alas, most of the country, including a majority of Democrats, see him only as dead man shuffling.  (And this does not even factor in the new revelations about multiple visits to the White House by a physician who specializes in Parkinson’s disease.)

Thus instead of quelling the drama…for the benefit of party and country…Biden has ensured that it will continue, perhaps all the way until November, descending into what could be a nice addition to the theater of the absurd.

For example, in quite an irony, the move to push Biden out might be the very thing that keeps him in the race.  Since Vice-President Harris seems a certainty to become the nominee if Biden steps down—denying her the nomination might create a fatal rift with Black voters—her virtues have been widely touted, while her many potential flaws as a candidate have been shoved into the shadows.  As a result, Biden’s cheering section, shrinking though it may be, can assert that if Harris is such a good bet, she can be trusted to fill in ably if Biden cannot complete a second term. 

So, I can see the Biden people asking, why bother to replace him then?

While this is a ludicrous argument, is it any more so than blaming party elites for his own headlong rush to electoral oblivion?

Also important to remember is, now that Biden is going to be forced to show this same vim and vigor for the next four months, all the while attending to the duties of office…albeit only until 8pm, with periodic naps…how likely is he to be able to do so without descending into the glassy-eyed, semi-catatonic figure fifty million people watched on television?

That image will not go away.  Republicans need only to flood the media with clips of Biden staring blankly into the camera, which they will do over and over and over again.  At one point, Democrats expressed great anxiety that their opponents, including the Russians, would employ fakes to make Biden seem dithering and senile, as they did after his visit to the D-Day sites. 

But fakes will no longer be necessary.  The real thing will be damning enough.

In the face of what is heart-sickeningly obvious to most honest Democrats, one must ponder why Biden is willing to take such an enormous risk, both to his own legacy and, as he puts it, the soul of the nation.  Is it possible, even in the echo chamber in which he lives, that he doesn’t see it as a risk?  More than likely is that Biden, his wife, his son, and his team have created convenient scenarios in which he maintains his energy, points to continued triumphs—a ceasefire in Gaza, for instance—while Trump grows more and more shrill and incoherent, with the nation then deciding that a minimally diminished Biden—his scenario—is the better alternative than the evil, anti-democratic, convicted felon Trump.

Could that happen?  Sure.  Is it likely to happen?

That depends on whether the world you live in is real or fantasy.  The problem with fantasy is that it makes the reality that inevitably ensues that much more painful.

And it will be painful, both for Biden and those in both parties who actually do value America.

So put away the sunglasses, Joe.  They don’t fit with the blinders.