A campaign like no other
In 1968, I was a great deal more interested in my St. Louis Cardi- nals and Bob Gibson’s magnificent season on the mound (1.12 ERA!) than I was in that year’s chaotic presidential election. But we’re hearing an awful lot about ’68 now, as we experience similar election chaos.
Indeed, it is hard to find, perhaps even taking ’68 into account, a campaign season in which we’ve experienced so many shocks within such a short period of time (roughly the last month).
Those shocks flow, however, from three earlier, terrible decisions made by the Democratic side.
First was Joe Biden’s effort to engage in race and gender pandering by picking California Sen. Kamala Harris as his 2020 running mate. It didn’t take long for even Democrats (and before that, just about all other sentient creatures) to realize that that choice was a mistake, as choices devoid of merit tend to be, and had put them in something of a bind—it would be hard for Joe Biden to step aside after the expected single term without being able to avoid the even more unpopular Harris in a party obsessed with identity politics (the reason Harris was chosen was thus the same reason she couldn’t be dumped in the way FDR was able to dump Henry Wallace back in 1944).
A combination of narcissism and arrogance produced the second terrible decision, in which Biden, despite clear mental and physical slippage, declared he would seek a second term, for the commencement of which he would already be five years older than any previous president.
The only more inexplicable decision in recent decades in American politics than Biden’s decision under such circumstances was the Democratic Party’s decision to so meekly accept it, offering virtually no resistance or alternatives despite the growing signs of both cognitive impairment and likely electoral disaster.
The third decision, roughly coinciding with Biden’s selfish, reckless choice, was to apparently initiate what would come to be called “lawfare” against former president Donald Trump, beginning with Alvin Bragg’s case in New York, after which Trump rocketed upward in the polls among Republicans while draped into the garb of martyr. Until the Bragg case, followed in quick succession by three more indictments, it was quite possible to envision Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the likely GOP pick; after Bragg neither he nor any other Republican stood a chance.
Whatever the legal merits to the Trump prosecutions, I remain convinced that the first (Bragg’s) wouldn’t have happened if
Trump hadn’t declared an intention to run again and the other three wouldn’t have happened if Republicans hadn’t closed ranks behind Trump after it, much to shortsighted Democratic delight.
Because of those three decisions— the selection of Harris, Biden’s unwise pursuit of a second term, and the unprecedented use of the criminal justice system against Trump—by early spring 2024 the country was virtually assured of a Biden-Trump rematch that few wanted.
This was the context in which the Biden camp, while slipping behind in swing-state polls, issued its ill-fated, braggadocio-accompanied (“make my day”) debate offer to Trump, which was so lopsided in its accompanying provisions as to likely have been intended to be refused, but wasn’t, leaving Biden’s condition fully exposed on live national television, along with the conspiratorial effort up to that point to conceal it from the American public.
It is not possible, as a purely logical matter, for a particular naked emperor to be more naked than other naked emperors, but if it were, Biden would be the most naked of all.
That debate gravely wounded
Biden’s already imperiled re-election prospects, but what happened over the following two weeks was in some underappreciated respects even worse.
The interview with George Stephanopoulos and the NATO summit press conference were viewed as tests that would determine Biden’s post-debate fate. It was, along such lines, hoped that Biden would do well enough to quash the “dump Biden” movement, or, conversely, so poorly as to give it the critical mass necessary to finally push him aside.
Something would have to give, either way, beneficially.
Instead, the Democrats got something “in-between,” a bit better than the awful debate but still bad enough to remind us of it. The result was sheer paralysis, with large chunks of the party continuing to shoot arrows into his carcass, but the carcass and his inner circle insisting everything was fine and they were all mere flesh wounds.
The attempted assassination of Trump left us with a stunning contrast, between Trump defiantly pumping his first in the air on that stage with blood on his face and Biden having to be gingerly helped down the two steps of the debate stage by “Dr. Jill.”
Worse still for Democrats, what happened in Pennsylvania at least temporarily slowed the momentum of the “dump Biden” movement, for which time has always been of the essence, further delaying the formulation of a Plan B in the event of Biden’s withdrawal.
At no point in time can I recall an election in which one side (the Republican) was so enthusiastic about its nominee and the other (the Democrat) so appalled by theirs.