A Message About Joe Biden and the Chicken Littles

I didn’t want to have to write this diary, but obviously people are still reeling from Thursday night’s debate and its implications, so I thought I should chime in on what happens next.

First of all, yes, it was a poor performance by our president. But a 90-minute misstep against a convicted felon who launched into a diarrheic tirade of lies and dodging questions without any resistance is absolutely no reason to change horses mid-race. In fact, this isn’t the first time an incumbent president has struggled during a debate only to bounce back stronger and win the election. Barack Obama stumbled in his first debate against Mitt Romney as his administration finally began to emerge from the depths of the worst recession since the Great Depression, but he recovered and easily won re-election. Even Ronald Reagan, who by the way, I couldn’t run for president and who was even showing the first signs of Alzheimer’s disease during his re-election campaign and who was only beginning to emerge from the worst recession since the Great Depression at the time, said Morning In America not only won reelection but also achieved Electoral College voting numbers not seen since Nixon vs. George McGovern. And besides, this was not the first time that Joe Biden was knocked out and left for dead politically. The same thing happened during his 2020 presidential campaign.

We all remember the massive turnout in the 2020 Democratic primaries, with a number of highly qualified candidates including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, and even Michael Bloomberg, among others. Pete Buttigieg narrowly won the Iowa primary over Bernie Sanders, while Joe Biden finished a distant fifth. After the New Hampshire primary, which Bernie Sanders won handily, Biden again fared poorly. I even remember reading an article in the New York Times or the Washington Post about Biden’s campaign and interviewing his staff. The campaign was even described as an atmosphere of mourning, with people telling Joe Biden to abandon his campaign because he was too old for the tastes of the voters at the time (never mind that Bernie Sanders was about the same age as Biden). Biden made a small breakthrough in the Nevada caucuses, but once again Bernie Sanders won fairly easily, so his campaign more or less desperately put all of its remaining chips into the South Carolina primary. As it turned out, Joe Biden won a decisive primary victory, winning every county in the state. He then dominated on Super Tuesday, forcing all of his competitors except Bernie Sanders to drop out of the race. After a few more primaries, Sanders eventually dropped out himself and conceded the nomination to Joe Biden.

Although Trump was impeached for meddling in Ukrainian affairs and demanding more information about Joe Biden in exchange for weapons to defend their country against what was then a potential Russian invasion, he was still favored to be re-elected. But then COVID-19 swept onto our shores, and its botched response to the pandemic as well as its hostile response to the Black Lives Matter protests and the rushed nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court after her death, oh Ruth Bader Ginsburg, led to the election of Joe Biden to the Oval Office. We all remember what happened next, from the big lie in court to the failed insurrection at the Capitol on January 6. 2021.

So, among all these events, Biden inherited a shitstorm. Nonetheless, despite a pandemic that refused to go away despite the presence of vaccines and resulting inflation due to supply chain issues, Joe Biden managed to lead us out of these crises, by passing the Rescue Plan American, the CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, which not only created thousands of new jobs, but also increased real wages for the first time since the 1970s. It also passed an increase in earned income tax credit, which lifted millions of children out of poverty until it was undermined by MAGA Republicans in Congress as well as traitorous Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Likewise, he passed a progressive budget despite a Republican House that couldn’t even agree on how to tie its own shoes. Meanwhile, Donald Trump was charged with 91 crimes in four different criminal cases, while also facing criticism in civil court, held responsible for sexual assault and financial fraud. Most recently, he was convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal illegal payments of campaign money he made to a porn star with whom he had a tryst after this third wife had just given birth to her fifth child. And he is set to be sentenced for these crimes on July 11.

So, despite Biden’s history of bouncing back from setbacks and tragic moments (and he’s bounced back from more tragic moments than most of us have ever experienced or would ever want to experience), why is everyone ready to give up now? Lawrence O’Donnell has already explained the logistical reasons why this can’t happen, but Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom and Jasmine Crockett have given the most passionate reasons to stick with the program. I’ve even read some comments in recent days arguing that we shouldn’t need to save Joe Biden; it is he who must save us. The reality is that we all have to save each other, our country and democracy itself. Joe Biden is not an omnipotent mythical figure who can do anything for us, but he is a good man and an American patriot who has served our country well. But he can’t do everything alone. In fact, that’s why we elect representatives, senators, governors, legislatures, mayors, city councils, school boards, and even dog catchers to represent our interests. Wasn’t this site originally created to elect more Democrats and better candidates for public office? That’s why we must support not only Joe Biden, but all of our candidates who are fighting for our democracy, an economy that works for all, women’s reproductive rights, the right to vote for all Americans, the protection of human rights people of color, immigrants and the LGBTQ community, and our climate. We already know that our adversaries seek to dismantle America’s democratic experiment, and although Trump is the visible face of the autocratic fascist movement, he gets a ton of help from MAGA Republicans in Congress and in red states, from a Court corrupt supreme, a ton of rich oligarchs, big business and foreign adversaries. It’s a lot to face, but it’s a struggle we all have to accept, whether we like it or not. Too many people suffered and died for the rights we currently enjoy, such as the many African Americans lynched during the Jim Crow period, the Shirtwaist factory workers, Emmet Till, Medgar Evers, Andrew Goodman, Michael Scherner, James Chaney, Matthew Shepard, Tina Brandon, George Floyd, Breanna Taylor and many more. We must defend all of Joe Biden’s accomplishments, and we must go to all the evangelicals who continue to follow Donald Trump, straight to their religious hearts and ask them if Jesus Christ would accept that a serial liar, an adulterer and a defrauder rules the people of Abraham and Moses. Of course, some of them are probably beyond our capacity to intervene, but we will plant a seed in some of their brains, and eventually the truth will germinate and bloom on their faces. This is why we still have to go door to door and even confront lies on social media. They try to manipulate us with lies, we manipulate them back with the truth. It won’t be easy, but it’s worth fighting for and we must do it now.