Open Letter to Democratic Leadership
June 30, 2024
First of all, I want to say that Joe Biden has been a GREAT president. If Democrats hold onto the U.S. government and are able to build upon the groundwork Biden has laid in terms of infrastructure and jobs, his presidency will go down in history as transformative. But after Thursday’s debate, that’s a HUGE if, and it looks all but certain that if Biden remains in the race, everything Biden has been able to accomplish will be un-done and pummeled to the ground by MAGA extremists, the Heritage Foundation, white nationalist Christian supremacists, and the Federalist Society billionaires.
If Biden stays in the race, I absolutely will still vote for him. I DO still believe he is capable, and he wants the best for the people of this country. Voting Republican or not voting at all are not options since there’s so much at stake. I get this. I understand how much of a career criminal Trump is and the danger that he and Project 2025 pose to our democracy and our freedoms. That’s why I’m asking Democratic leadership to band together to ask Biden to step down to let someone else run. There are too many low-information voters who have no clue what the stakes are, and Biden’s debate debacle essentially ruined his chances with these voters.
My 86-year-old father is a lifelong Republican who HATES Trump and what he’s done to the Republican party. (Although my dad is a Republican, he seems to agree with many Democratic policies rather than the pro-gun, pro-bigotry Republican ones, but he’s one of the many people who votes Republican in large part because he identifies as “conservative,” and relates to all the moderate, salt-of-the-earth, solid work-ethic connotations of that word. As I’ve written at length before, I wish the media would STOP using the word “conservative” to describe today’s MAGA Republicans and Federalist Society Justices. But I digress.) My dad has been furious with Biden since the President decided to run for reelection instead of stepping aside and letting someone younger go up against Trump. Last week, before the debate, my dad was somewhat prescient—he commented that maybe there could be a silver lining if Biden screwed up so badly that the Democrats would have to replace him.
I cringed when my dad said that, for all of the standard reasons…it’s not realistic, it’s a little late in the game for a switch-up at the top of the ticket, the Biden/Harris campaign has the big war chest, and the question of who would take over is dodgy…it’s a bad look to skip over Harris, but she’s probably one of the few prominent Democrats who would have less of a chance of beating Trump than Biden. Last week, I thought that the chaos and mess of shaking up the top of the ticket would be too risky. And I was really hoping and expecting to see fiery State-of-the-Union Joe show up.
But minutes into the debate (even before Biden’s brain froze), the equation changed, and I realized that my dad was right. There’s no coming back from that performance.
And yes, I know that Trump spewed out a firehose of lies during the debate. If his lips were moving, he was lying, including the lie that Democrats want to kill babies AFTER BIRTH, a lie that I think is tantamount to stochastic terrorism against liberals. (It pains me that Biden wasn’t able to fight back harder against that lie. Yes, he called it out as a lie, but not forcefully enough. Even I, someone who isn’t in politics, would’ve had a stronger comeback to that one. Biden could’ve used any of the arguments I’ve made here in response to this lie coming from a hypothetical right-wing troll.) And I get that it’s unfair that Biden’s age and perceived feebleness was the leading story instead of Trump’s pathological lying. But Trump’s history of lying is so accepted by now that it barely seems newsworthy. No one in the MAGA cult cares, and low-information swing voters are likely to shrug off lies as typical politics, even when those lies are as brazen and outrageous as Trump’s. It’s not fair, but it’s reality, and it’s what we have to deal with.
Back in the middle of May, the topic of the presidential race came up at a work event. One of my co-workers somewhat condescendingly quipped that he didn’t want to vote for a president who needed to “take naps.” I was completely gobsmacked by this comment, because this co-worker is an intelligent person who lives in a blue area in the blue state of New Jersey, and he works in our firm’s offices in both New Jersey and liberal Manhattan, and he is Jewish, so he presumably would not be happy in a Christo-fascist autocracy. But his main concern was “naps.” At that point, I noted that Trump and Biden are BOTH pretty much equally old, so age is a factor either way. The argument prior to this past Thursday night was that Americans have the choice between Good Grandpa who wants to save Democracy and Bad Grandpa who wants to destroy it. But after Thursday night’s debate, even the ability to offer that weak-sauce argument has been hobbled. Yes, the “good” and “bad” points are still there, but in terms of grandpa-ness…Biden looked and sounded at least a decade older than Trump instead of just three years older.
And yes, I KNOW that “naps” is a pretty lame thing to have at the top of your list of concerns when the direction of our country and the health of the entire planet are at stake. But too many people don’t pay attention. Liberals who follow politics know that this week presented a horror show of Supreme Court decisions led by the billionaire-sponsored Federalist Society supermajority that will have monumental negative impacts for decades, and that we need to elect a Democratic president to at least neutralize some of the harm they’re able to accomplish. But most people DON’T know what’s at stake.
And I KNOW that the job of the President isn’t all public speaking. I know that decisions are made behind closed doors and with trusted advisors. And I know that Biden surrounds himself with the best and the brightest, most competent advisors, and he takes their advice. And I know that in contrast, Trump will surround himself with a cabal of yes-men, insurrectionists, billionaires, Fundamentalist Christian zealots, literal white Supremacists, and probably some of his fellow clownish reality TV personalities and the Pillow Guy. But part of the job of the Commander-in-Chief IS to lead and inspire. And if I have to spend the next four months trying to assure my un-decided, low-information-voter friends that, “yeah, sure, there might be a Weekend-at-Bernie’s-type situation in the Biden White House, but at least the people propping him up and leading him around are the best!” then we’ve already lost.
I realize that the day after the debate, Joe Biden was much more energetic at his rally. I’m sure he IS still capable of delivering a good speech. But do we all really have to spend the next four months on pins-and-needles not knowing which version of Biden will show up? Hoping he isn’t completely sidelined by a cold? Comparisons have been made to John Fetterman’s painful debate in the race for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania after his stroke. Fortunately, Fetterman still won, and he appears much better and much more able to articulate his ideas since then. But, as someone in his 50s who was recovering from a specific medical crisis, Fetterman could reasonably be expected to get better with the passage of time. Joe Biden’s affliction is old age. That’s not something that the passage of time is going to help. Democratic voters like myself are having PTSD-like flashbacks of the time when we had to put all our faith and hope in Ruth Bader Ginsburg living long enough for Biden instead of Trump to fill her seat on the Supreme Court, but even though she was brilliant and capable, she couldn’t win against time for us.
I understand why a lot of Democrats are upset with calls like this for Biden to step down. Again, no matter what condition Biden is in, he is a MUCH better man than Trump, the convicted felon who needs to be defeated at all costs. This isn’t meant to be a commentary on Biden’s capability to serve as President. He has done a great job, and I believe he has the ability to continue to do a great job in a second term. This is a commentary about his chance of WINNING, which is something different altogether, and is unfortunately based on appearances. I realize that since Roe v. Wade was overturned by the dark money FedSoc court, Democrats have over-performed in election after election, but I think it would be foolish to assume that this trend is enough to offset Biden’s poor debate performance. And besides, any other Democrat at the top of the ticket would also have to support women’s rights, so removing Biden from the top of the ticket wouldn’t negatively impact the turnout of people whose primary issue is abortion access.
Again, I think that Biden has done a GREAT job and should be praised and recognized for that. But it’s too important to defeat Trump and MAGAs and dark money Federalist Society billionaires. That’s too much pressure and stress to put on the shoulders of an 81-year-old man, even if he thinks he can handle it. We only have a very narrow window to replace Biden. If the frail version of Biden shows up at the debate in September, or at any point publicly between now and then, we’re absolutely doomed. So, again, I ask Democratic leadership to please ask Biden to step aside, and come up with a plan for someone younger than 65 who has a chance to win to take the reins. We know that voter enthusiasm drives turnout and wins elections. We still have four months to give voters something to be excited about. After Thursday’s debate performance, it’s difficult to imagine Biden inspiring the enthusiasm we need to win. Sure, replacing Biden at this stage will be messy and chaotic, but it also has the potential to generate the excitement and enthusiasm we need.
If we don’t replace Biden on the ticket, of course I’ll still support him. But if that’s the case I ask leading Democrats and the Biden/Harris campaign to PLEASE change your tactics. This is not business-as-usual. Yes, I appreciate all the great things Biden has done in terms of infrastructure and jobs, and I want to see him fight back against corporate price gouging. But these are politics-as-usual messages, and will do nothing to drive voter engagement or to counter the awful—but real—debate clips that Republicans will show over and over. This message will do nothing to offset the impact of the racist anti-immigrant fear-mongering ads that Republicans are sure to run in abundance over next few months. We have to stop relying on facts and instead do what Republicans do successfully—appeal to emotions.
The Biden/Harris campaign had one good advertisement showing a Texas woman who was denied the abortion of a non-viable fetus until she was on death’s door and her reproductive system was damaged in the aftermath of Trump’s Federalist Society justices overturning Roe v. Wade. I want to see more of that kind of ad, times 1,000. (Over a year ago, I wrote some examples of messaging I’d like to see from Democrats. Now, we need to be even MORE direct. We have to raise the alarm.) I want to see commercials dramatizing pregnant women screaming in pain and writhing on the floor in hospital emergency rooms while their loved ones unsuccessfully plead with the doctors who are forbidden by law to abort non-viable fetuses until the mother is almost dead. I want to see commercials showing a Trumpworld/MAGA reality in which a visibly deranged lunatic armed with an AR15 and bump stocks is taking aim at a group of children in school, or at an amusement park or playground. I want to see commercials where a family is sitting around a kitchen table stressing out about how they’re going to pay for household items now that they have to pay Trump’s 10% tariff on top of already inflated prices set by corporate monopolies, while also paying for inflated medical bills and for private schools since the public education system has been dismantled by Project 2025. I want to see a commercial of the Trump/MAGA dystopian future with octogenarian janitors complaining that they still have to work full-time now that Republicans took their social security away…and that they’ll have to kill themselves if they get sick again because they can’t afford medical care. I want to see commercials with a family trying to barricade themselves in their house to protect themselves from a raging hurricane because they didn’t have any advance warning after Trump removed all qualified scientists from the agencies that track hurricanes and replaced them with incompetent MAGA loyalists who downplay weather catastrophes so they can continue to claim that climate change isn’t real. I want to see commercials showing the likely aftermath of Trump/MAGA/FedSoc corporate deregulations, with planes falling out the sky, freight trains barreling through residential neighborhoods exploding in toxic clouds, and babies being poisoned by non-regulated baby food. Low-information voters need to know how much more there is at stake than just “naps.”
I will gladly donate to any group that can put this kind of messaging together and get it into mainstream media. But I’m not going to donate to Biden/Harris if my donation is wasted on ads that just pretend that things are business-as-usual.
In conclusion, again, I’m asking Democratic leadership to try to convince Biden to step down for the good of the country. Yes, I still believe he is capable of serving as president…I just don’t think he’s capable of winning. Maybe you can show him this clip from the performance of Hamilton at the White House. I hope Biden was paying attention to the message of George Washington explaining to Hamilton why he had to step down to protect his legacy and the future of the country he founded.
You can tell him that history has it’s eyes on you, Joe Biden. Tell him that he can be the transformative president who ushered in middle-class prosperity, put us on a path to save the environment, strengthened democracy and equality and justice. Or he can be the president who gave us a temporary respite, but then ended up handing the country over to right-wing extremists hellbent on gutting American freedoms.
