Protecting Biden Isn’t Good for the Democrats or the Country

If they want to win in November, the party needs a major shake-up.

Last Thursday, over 50 million Americans witnessed, in real-time, a jaw-dropping display of presidential unfitness from Joe Biden. People’s worst suspicions were confirmed, and those of us who’d long been saying that Biden shouldn’t have run for reelection, and should have instead granted his party a proper primary, were all but vindicated. I took no delight in writing about the debacle last week, as I’m of the archaic belief that both parties should be presenting their very best candidates… or at least individuals who are minimally fit for office.

Unfortunately, neither party has done that. And one of the little talked about side-stories from last week’s horror-show for the Democratic party is that, in addition to his inability to prove himself adequate, Biden had little capacity to prosecute the unfitness of his general-election opponent.

It would have been a walk in the park for a capable politician — someone whose cognizance was still intact. But with Joe Biden, all Donald Trump had to do to sidestep any such case was maintain a relatively calm temperament, and let the world focus instead on the glaring shortcomings of his opponent — our sitting U.S. president. In sticking with Biden, the Democrats blew an opportunity last Thursday, in front of an enormous audience, that they’ll never have again.

Several lines of attack (including lay-up rebuttals), that Biden could have and should have used, never made it out of the starting gate. Those that did, like with Trump’s dirt-low views of members of our military — especially wounded veterans (as witnessed by high-ranking Trump administration officials), were so clumsy and garbled that people who weren’t familiar with the story (which was probably most of those watching) had no idea what Biden was talking about. And when Trump dismissed such accounts as fake news, Biden’s feeble attempts to press the point (further hindered by his blank gaze and dangling jaw) went nowhere.

Then, there were the lies.

Biden told some whoppers of his own, but Trump, as expected, went on one dishonest tear after another. CNN decided before the debate that its moderators weren’t going to fact-check the candidates’ assertions live. That decision has spawned some criticism, but the moderators were consistent in their application, and left it up to the debate participants to call out each other’s false claims. Sadly, Biden rarely managed to.

The same was true for some of the most outlandish statements of the night, like Trump seemingly saying that he had talked to Vladmir Putin, in between when the United States withdrew from Afghanistan, and when Russia invaded Ukraine, about Putin’s desire and ultimate decision to attack his neighbor. That should have been a ‘stop the presses’ moment. Putin was consulting Trump — a former U.S. president — about invading one of our allies? Biden should have been all over that remark, demanding an explanation, or at least some clarification. But he didn’t … because he couldn’t. I’m not convinced the remark registered at all with him.

Something else Biden couldn’t effectively do was evoke the sense of chaos many felt during Trump’s first term, especially in regard to Trump’s handling of the pandemic, which many cite as the reason Trump lost in the first place. My hope for a serious policy discussion also proved to be a non-starter.

There are Biden surrogates and steadfast supporters who are always ready and willing to fill in the blanks, but if the president can’t make a strong case for himself, and he can’t make a strong case against Trump, his candidacy is doomed.

I’ve been saying for months that if either party replaces their presumptive nominee with even just a generic candidate, that party will win the White House in a landslide; otherwise it will be a toss-up election. But after Thursday’s debate, coupled with the glaring reality that Biden isn’t going to get any younger or sharper between now and November, I think even Donald Trump could beat Biden in a landslide.

Is that what the Democrats want? To hand the presidency to Donald Trump on a silver platter? This is the guy, after all, who they routinely insist is an existential threat to our democracy.

No one should be under the illusion, at this point, that replacing Biden as the party’s standard-bearer would be easy. It would have been easy a year ago, but now it would be quite difficult. The Democrats should do it anyway.

It’s sad that we’ve reached this moment in history, and the truth of the matter is that both parties are a joke. As our friend Chris Stirewalt recently wrote, “When Republicans offer a convicted felon who tried to steal a second term and Democrats offer an obviously infirm 81-year-old, even casual political observers understand that something is seriously wrong with our system.”

If Biden and Trump cared more about America than their own self-interests, they would have stepped aside some time ago, and allowed for the next generation of leaders to rise to the top. But they don’t care.

The GOP has no intention of reversing course on Trump. He owns the party, and Republicans are probably more resolute than ever after Thursday’s debate. They smell blood in the water.

But the Democrats have a last-ditch opportunity right now, amidst internal pressure and calls from the party’s base, to correct the course. Again, it would be hard, and it would require Biden’s unlikely cooperation, but it’s the smartest play available … and also the most patriotic.

Voter discontent with our presidential choices is at an all-time high, and sectors of the American electorate are absolutely to blame for that. But a nation as great as ours deserves better. It deserves at least one viable presidential candidate who’s fit to serve in the highest office in the land.

I believe the party with the guts to actually produce one would be handsomely rewarded by voters.