In the ongoing saga of “will Biden step aside?” I read Brian Beutler’s analysis of when McCain picked Palin to try to shake up a race he was losing. He argues that it didn’t work because everyone quickly saw that Palin was not qualified to be VP or president and concludes that this is not the situation with Biden — if he steps aside, Harris or the other likely candidates who could take over are all qualified.
This is a substack and I don’t subscribe (bc I think Substack sucks and bc I just can’t with all the subscriptions these days) so I can’t seem to access the comments now, although I did in my feed reader, and two points from there are worth noting:
- Biden is no longer a good communicator. He has accomplished a great deal and been a great president but not enough people seem to understand and give him credit for this, and one reason is that he can no longer communicate effectively.
- Related: This election is coming down to a battle for democracy. If Biden can’t communicate, he cannot fight vigorously, which means we will likely lose and that means democracy loses. And, if we’re going to lose anyway, it would be better to have a younger, more vigorous leader fighting for us and leading the charge against the fascism of a second Trump presidency, than to lose with Biden and just have zero leadership at all.
Biden’s been great, but he needs to go.