Last night, I ghost-wrote this for the editorial board of Raw Story at their request; they made a few changes and expanded it somewhat as you can see on their site.
This morning, I would add that Trump told over 30 massive and consequential lies last night, again demonstrating his lack of fitness for the presidency and CNN’s inability to honestly moderate a debate. It’s doubtful, though, that anybody in the Republican party will be discussing replacing him today.
There are massive possible downsides and upsides to replacing President Biden on the ticket at this late date. The upside is that the publicity and national curiosity around the new candidate could swamp Trump and his BS and reinvigorate the campaign.
The downside is that the possible infighting, and the possibility of the Democratic Party picking a weak candidate (including the vice president), could produce the opposite effect and hand the election to Trump:
When you’re president, your main job is to make good decisions and keep the country running smoothly and safely, both domestically and internationally.
When you’re running for president as a candidate, though, your job is quite different: your new job is to be the best communicator in the nation. And President Biden — as great and brilliant as he’s been on policy — failed in that in last night’s debate and has thus made America incapable of trusting him to lead this country forward in the 21st century.
It’s vital to acknowledge that President Biden has led the country through an extraordinarily difficult time in American history. He inherited the worst mess from a predecessor since FDR took over when Republican President Hoover crashed the country into the Republican Great Depression.
He’s shepherded the biggest infrastructure and climate accomplishments in the history of the country. He was the first Democrat since LBJ to openly repudiate neoliberalism and put America back on the progressive track that FDR defined for the nation.
He’s helped out student borrowers (in the face of GOP lawsuits), and taken on giant monopolies, big banks, dysfunctional airlines, and big polluters. And he’s defended democracy valiantly in Ukraine and around the world, which now, again, respects America.
He has presided over, and arguably created, the best economy in some ways since the 1960s and in many ways since the 1930s. More Americans have opportunities and jobs than any time in American history.
President Biden has nominated some of the most diverse and brilliant judges and agency heads in the history of our nation. He’s been a spectacular president in every regard; perhaps the best and most consequential in the lifetime of many of us, even boomers.
But whoever made the decision to put Joe Biden — an 81-year-old introvert with a lifelong stutter — head-to-head against the guy NBC spent over a million dollars and 14 years training as a TV personality should never again darken the doors of a Democratic campaign.
More importantly, because CNN licensed last night’s debate to all the other networks so it will almost certainly turn out to have had the largest presidential debate TV audience in American history, it’s time for the Democratic Party to reconsider Joe Biden as their 2024 presidential candidate.
This election is too important to indulge one man’s desire to hang onto his office. It literally will define the future of democracy as a form of governance both in America and worldwide.
It’s not like the Democratic Party is lacking in talent. There are some superstars and some sleepers, but the decision about the Democratic Party’s nominee isn’t real and official until the Party meets in August.
Making a change is a mind-boggling responsibility, but the Party has faced similar ones in the past, from asking LBJ and Harry Truman not to run for re-election to revisiting FDR’s vice-presidential candidate (among others).
It’s time for serious soul-searching. The Democratic Party is not without resources, and certainly has the ability to decide on a replacement for a candidate who’s done a wonderful job in his role as president but now needs to retire from the campaign with the gratitude of the nation.
