The Recent Presidential Debate & the State of the Country

 

Let me just admit one thing right off the bat: I did not watch the presidential debate live. I just couldn't. bring myself to do it. 

Here's the thing: when I was younger, elections were a welcome time. My assumption - clearly mistaken - was that elections were good for the country. They informed the public, increased awareness on the most pertinent issues of the day.  

Also, back then I could not understand how so many people could roll their eyes and express sheer disgust at politics during the election season, and particularly the presidential election season. After all, I figured, it only came once every four years.

Fast-forward quite a few decades. Now, I am one of those people who rolls their eyes for every election cycle. Personally, I was sick of this election a couple of years ago, when it became clear that it basically would be a rematch of thee 2020 election. 

Most of us are tired of the platitudes. Who isn't tired of hearing how this election is going to be the most important election of our lifetimes? Didn't we hear the same thing during the last presidential elections? And didn't we hear that same sentiment in the 2016 elections, as well? Come to think of it, I seem to remember hearing that back in 2008, as well. And the same sense of urgency was shared in 2004, and even in 2000.  

It seems that for some people, every election is life or death. Every election is the most important election of our lifetime. 

The problems with that, obviously, is that it does not stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. It just isn't mathematically possible that every election is the most important election of our lifetimes. Before long, that message begins to fall on deaf ears. It's like the boy who cried wolf. 

So let's get specific now. We have two establishment candidates. Joe Biden is a career politician, and epitomizes the elite Washington insider. Like with the Clintons, it is virtually impossible to imagine what Joe Biden would be doing, or who he would even be, if he was not a prominent Washington politician. And while Donald Trump might have been somewhat of an outsider to politics when he won the 2016 election, that surely is no longer the case. Not after having been in the White House for four years. Not after this being the third time that he is the Republican nominee for the White House, something that this country has not seen since the days of FDR. So they are both very established politicians. They are both all too familiar to the American public. 

If I am being truthful, I feel that this is the worst presidential election that I have ever seen. I felt that the 2016 election was, as Lee Child suggested, an insult to the collective intelligence of the American people. Then 2020 was hardly better than that.  

Yet this election, when we have a choice, yet again, between two tired old men with tired old ideas and tired old approaches to their politics, feels worse.  

What? How can I possibly say that?  

Well, I say that  because Trump is, frankly, a pig. He and his supporters want everyone desperately to believe that he is still a political outsider. But in 2020, he was the incumbent. And this time around, he is the former president, and again, the Republican nominee for a record third time. He has not introduced any new ideas. Just the same old viewpoints that he championed in the prior two presidential elections. If you are a supporter, then you think that he stands for you, champions your values. And if you do not like him at all, you still feel that he represents everything that is wrong with the country. Nothing has changed, in that regard. In fact, you can boil it down to this being the third straight presidential election in which Donald Trump is front and center, and where the election is basically decided not so much on the issues, as on how the country feels, collectively, about Donald Trump. 

How tiresome. How unimaginative as a nation. To think that these two old men are allegedly the two best options for a country of about 330 million people feels like the real insult to our collective intelligence. 

So yes, this election is all about Donald Trump. Just like 2016. And just like 2020. As a country, we cannot seem to move past this pathetic, needy, lying man. 

Knowing this, what then do the Democrats do? They rely on the slickest, most establishment candidates that they can find to beat the least conventional president of our times, if not all times The reason that Trump may seem like an outsider is because he does not act like a typical establishment politician. That, in fact, is his act, to make it seem like he is telling his own opinion, which some people apparently feel is refreshing.

How could mainstream Democrats not see that Hillary Clinton could prove to be a liability in the 2016 election? How did they actually believe that preventing her from facing competition for the nomination would not make her appear stronger, but would actually weaken her? You need to be challenged in order to sharpen the tools you need to run a strong race. If she showed cowardice towards those ends, and exhibited a false sense of entitlement in her obvious expectations to take over the White House, then why would we be surprised when people were far less thrilled with her than mainstream Democrats were?  

Then in 2020, for the second straight election, it felt like Bernie Sanders was robbed. He had even more momentum in 2020 and seemed destined to win the Democratic nomination, until some obvious backroom deals resulted in many major Democratic candidates dropping out just before Super Tuesday, effectively making Biden the frontrunner. There was anger against Trump, and personally, I feel that this was why Biden won the presidency. It was not so much excitement for Biden, as it was disgust and fatigue with the Trump presidency. 

Already, Biden's age was considered a source of concern in 2020. How did they not foresee how it could be a far more detrimental issue come 20204? Did they really believe that Trump would simply go away? Perhaps that he would be locked up, and let's throw away the keys? I pretty much knew that Trump would run again, and it seemed obvious to me. No need to spend millions of dollars in research, or anything, either. The man's ego would not allow him to concede the 2020 race. He kept going with his ridiculous rallies, and kept reiterating the same talking points as always. Did you really think that maybe someone else would get the nomination? DeSantis, perhaps? 

Give me a break.  

So now, Biden seems to have confirmed that the concerns that he is too old and really not fit to be in the Oval Office for the next four years appear to have been legitimate. In recent videos, he looks frozen and confused, not altogether with it. 

And in the debate? 

Well, I didn't watch it, as stated earlier. But yesterday morning, I turned on the news, just to see what they had to say. And the very first thing that I saw was about how some concerned Democrats were now asking Biden to bow out of the race. 

Uh-oh.

Could it have actually been that bad? 

Apparently, yes. In fact, it was worse, because suddenly, all of the exaggerated conspiracy theories y Trump supporters about how Biden was senile and incompetent were suddenly looking not so nonsensical. This was the worst nightmare for the Democrats in this particular presidential race come true.

Given the fairly obvious threat to American democracy posed by King Con Don and his Cult 45 following, the fact that he still holds a narrow lead even after his criminal convictions is disturbing enough. But this performance by Joe Biden, which confirm that he seems far more vulnerable than anyone on the Biden team or among Democrats wanted to believe is worse still. This election was described as a last defense for American democracy. And now, it appears that the Democratic candidate really is too frail for such a fight. 

In a strange way, Biden feels like they are symbolic of a weakened American democracy and a wavering last line of defense against dictatorship in a similar way to Hindenburg being the last line of defense against the dictatorship that came to be once he was out of the way. I am not trying to compare Trump to Hitler, or the United States now to Germany in the 1930's. But certainly, I feel we could have learned lessons from history a little better than we have.

As I have mentioned before, I had a very bad feeling about this 2024 election for a long, long time. I suspected that Trump was far from done even after he lost the 2020 election - and yes, he lost that election, and soundly. It feels like everything is playing into his hands, even more than in 2016. The timing of the trials are playing into Trump's hands, making it indeed look like a political witch hunt. His convictions seem to reinforce for some that he is being targeted and persecuted and, as he suggests, being treated badly. And now this. A weak and vulnerable President Biden, seemingly confirming just how incompetent and unfit for the presidency he is. 

Where do the Democrats go from here? 

Should they really get someone else, with just four months to go before the November election? Do they stick with Biden, who increasingly seems like a liability? 

Never before, at least in recent history, has one of the major parties been in such a state of crisis about who should be the official nominee this close to the actual election. Oh, sure, there was some discussion about Donald Trump being replaced in 2016, because some Republicans felt that he was a liability, and they just could not take him or his candidacy seriously. But this time around, it seems like everyone is looking at Biden as too much of a liability. As possibly actively self-destructive and self-defeating as a presidential candidate, despite being the incumbent. 

So in the third or fourth, or possibly fifth consecutive most important election of our lifetimes, it seems that Biden and the Democrats are looking more vulnerable than ever. Indeed, it feels like this time, democracy itself might hang in the balance. Although this, too, feels inevitable. If democracy wasn't handed a devastating blow in 2020, it would probably happen in 2024. And it feels as if somehow, we escape that fate this time around, then we will have to deal with it in 2028. Or 2032. Frankly, the Republicans of the Trump, and presumably post-Trump, era are not the Republicans of even a few decades ago. Those Republicans sometimes were accused, and with some justification, of having authoritarian leanings. But now we have someone who is not shying away from clearly claiming he will assume dictatorial powers on day one. It feels like just a matter of time now. 

Is this really the way that American democracy as we know it comes to an end?