Our Biden problem and our Trump problem are the same problem

 

Photo by Aaron Kittredge

For the last few years, I've been asking a question: Will we know when American democracy ends? 

I don't know. But it seems to me there's a real possibility it happened Monday, when the Supreme Court ruled that presidents -- well, Donald Trump, but supposedly all presidents -- have "absolute immunity" for official acts committed while in office. If the president is above the law, if there is no real way to stop him from abusing his power (and impeachment doesn't really count at this point; it's a dead letters) then ... what, exactly, restrains a president from acting tyrannically?

So there's that.

But that's not what I want to talk about today. Instead, I want to talk about my friend Will Bunch, and his latest column at the Philadelphia Inquirer, which takes to task all the journalists who have focused obsessively on Joe Biden's age in the days since last week's disastrous debate.

Dropping names — Whitmer! Shapiro! Warnock! — like a groupie backstage at a heavy-metal concert, floating wildly implausible scenarios, stretching so hard for historical analogies that several probably blew out a hamstring, America’s pundit class managed to achieve a level of groupthink that surpassed the brainwashers of The Manchurian Candidate. All argued that for the good of the country he loves, Biden — hoarse, barely audible, and visibly confused a few times during Thursday’s Atlanta presidential debate — must immediately end his candidacy.

[snip]

And look, I’m not going to argue that Biden’s health is not an issue. His debate performance was troubling, but I also think those of us determined not to see Donald Trump become president again should take a deep breath — even if that’s not the clickbait headline that many are eager to write. Biden needs to do more to assure the public about his energy level, and we also need to see the polls. Any decision should be based on the paramount thing — the thing that should be getting 72-point headlines: stopping dictatorship. As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote Monday in her dissent, this is a “five-alarm fire that threatens to consume democratic self-governance.”

[snip]

The reality of what’s happening in July 2024 — that an authoritarian-minded president, with help from a politicized and unethical Supreme Court, is on track to lead a nation where all power is being vested in him, his MAGA movement, and the corporate polluters — is THE story, and Biden’s health is a subplot in that drama. The current president is walking slowly, but it’s the American Experiment that’s on a ventilator. Journalists aren’t doing their job: performing basic triage and focusing on the sickest patient in the room. With fear for our democracy, I dissent.

I don't often disagree with Will. And he certainly nods toward the need for Biden to satisfy voters about the state of his health and intellect. But ultimately he treats this as an "either-or" situation. And I don't think it's that.

For me, my concern -- and focus -- on Biden's age is a function of my fears of a second Donald Trump presidency.

I don't want Trump to be president again. I think it would be a disaster for democracy, if there's much left to save. And I think it would accelerate America's decline with unbelievable speed, because that's what authoritarians who try to reclaim the glorious past tend to do.

Biden doesn't seem capable of personally making that case at this point. I'm not sure he's up to the task of governing for four more years, honestly. And most immediately: Polls show that nearly three-quarters of voters think Biden is too old and impaired to handle the job. There are already these concerns in the electorate. The debate made them worse. And it's not clear Biden can fix that in the next few months.

I doubt it, frankly.

Which means the one thing we need Joe Biden to do -- to stop Trump in his tracks -- is the one thing that increasingly seems out of reach. I don't need Biden to be president. I do need Trump not to be president. That means Joe Biden's age (and widespread voter concerns about them) isn't a "subplot."

These aren't two different problems. They're the same problem.