Biden did OK on substance but lost where it counted most, performance. Dems should be in a panic.
The only upside for Dems in last night’s debate is that Donald Trump reinforced the general impressions that he can never shake off. He continues to spontaneously combust into a firestorm of lies (fact checkers will have a field day as I write this, immediately after the debate), he continues to evade questions (e.g. What will you do about child care? What will you do about climate change? What will you do about Social Security?) and he continues to lapse into divergent streams-of-consciousness and run-on sentences that morph into incoherence, making little or no sense and generally converging into the same absurdly apocalyptic conclusion: this country is a self-imploding disaster.
That I’m calling him the winner of last night’s confrontation only underscores the terribleness of Joe Biden’s performance, which was halting, weak and frail. Any delusions about his ability to function as something of an elder statesman were obliterated by his lack of forcefulness, never mind animation.
I still think his mind is sharp enough to be able to handle the intellectual challenges of the presidency, but leadership is more than management. Its essence is inspiration, a quality that Biden (seen above in a public domain image posted on wikimedia commons) projected when he won in 2020 but has since withered away.
If it came to a head-to-head with Trump, Biden will still get my vote just because the general principles that guide him and his policy initiatives are what I’m supporting. That’s probably the case for the bulk of Biden’s supporters. But in the world of practical politics, image is probably a factor that carries as much weight as substance in a voting booth.
It’s time for Biden to step aside and turn the party’s leadership over to the next generation of presidential aspirants. If this debate did Democrats any good, it’s the fact that the timing of it still gives the party enough time to field a candidate whose ability to function won’t be called into question as the campaign moves into high gear.
Stepping aside would be the best thing Biden could do for his country and his party.
John Tsitrian is a businessman and writer from the Black Hills. He was a weekly columnist for the Rapid City Journal for 20 years. His articles and commentary have also appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Denver Post and The Omaha World-Herald. Tsitrian served in the Marines for three years (1966-69), including a 13-month tour of duty as a radioman in Vietnam. Reprint with permission.
