I’ve said time and again that what most people want from an American president right now is sensible, practical, fair-minded, JFK-styled liberalism. By today’s political barometer that translates into some kind of left-moderate centrism — responsible, measured, forward-thinking governance that respects the various tribes, but not too wokey-woke. Respect for the hard-working middles, roosters don’t lay eggs, no more homeless bums ripping off CVS stores, etc.
Biden wasn’t so much triumphant in late 2020 as most voters understood that Donald Trump was an anti-democratic, frothing-at-the-mouth sociopath, and therefore had to go. And so Joe Biden won fair and square.
Then the Biden team turned right around and got the pandemic under control and invigorated the job market and withdrew clumsily from Afghanistan and whatnot, and then (this is where some of the trouble started) became cheerleaders for progressive change across the board — a government that seemed to be more in the equity-over-meritocracy camp than vice versa. And then came the Ukraine War, ridiculous gas prices (bad), out-of-control inflation (cancer).
Jimmy Kimmel on Republicans: “It’s like you’re playing Monopoly with somebody who won’t pass ‘Go’ and won’t follow any of the rules … How do you ever make any progress?”
President Biden: “You gotta send ’em to jail.”pic.twitter.com/c1MH1eWtY3
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) June 9, 2022
The guy in charge always takes the blame for everything, and the coming anti-Democratic slaughter in the November mid-terms won’t be the half of it. Nobody wants another Biden-vs.-Beast election in ’24, but this, dear God, might happen. Many of us are very, very afraid of Trump returning to the White House — a prospect too horrible to contemplate and yet contemplate it we must. People still want to vote for a sensible, not-too-extreme left-moderate or right-moderate, but the system is apparently unwilling to cough up that possibility.
Therefore: Vote in November ’24 for an amiable, hoarse-voiced, woke-favoring, 80-year-old grandpa whose job performance most voters (to go by polls) disapprove of, or for a deranged, diabolical, anti-democratic, crime-boss grandpa who deserves to be wearing an orange jumpsuit but may not even be prosecuted because Attorney General Merrick Garland doesn’t have the sand.
The bottom line is that Biden might have a shot if he was 55 or 60 or even 65, but people really, really don’t like the idea of a doddering old fellow at the helm. Most voters believe that Joe’s a decent human being but they suspect he’s too much in the pocket of the wokes, and that he’s not strong or sharp enough to crack the whip the way it needs to be cracked. His instincts are sound but people want younger…they just do.
I hate to say it as I like and admire Joe Biden, but someone strong and moderate and JFK-like (a GenXer in their 50s or early 60s) needs to challenge him in the primaries, and that means starting next year. I’m sorry but I’m scared. Who isn’t?