Biden Must Go

Joe Biden is a decent man, but he was old and feeble throughout the debate.

Donald Trump is a convicted felon and a consummate liar, but he was full of energy and was in full control of his performance during the debate.

That is the conclusion I draw from the debate last night between the two contenders for the U.S. residency in November.

I along with many other observers feel that Biden must go.

That is the verdict of almost every Democrat and centrist Republican who watched this sad performance, a performance that solidified Biden’s weakness in the eyes of tens of millions of American voters and viewers around the world.

This was not lost on foreign leaders who are busy factoring in a likely Trump Presidency come January and who are assessing the potential impacts in their countries.

Kenny Rogers sang “you’ve got to know when to hold ‘em and know when to fold ‘em”.

Joe Biden should have folded them after his successful mid-term victories in the House and the Senate in 2022 by stating he would not seek re-election thereby putting himself to leave with his dignity and legacy intact.

Instead, he has stumbled throughout the past two years and, especially, through this crucial debate, he confirmed every sane observer’s view that he is simply too old for the job.

According to Jerusalem Demsas writing in The Atlantic, “throughout last night’s debate, Trump lied; obfuscated; and made bizarre, unsupported arguments about the economy, foreign policy, abortion, and the January 6 riot.“

A halfway competent opponent would have capitalized on these many, many errors but Biden could barely speak coherently. The catastrophe of the incumbent’s performance is almost impossible to capture in words; you have to have seen it.

Donald Trump was on message (mostly lies) and full of the energy that a contender for the presidency must have when he gets that emergency call at 3 am.

So, what do the Democrats do?

They must see that in the voters’ minds the election will ultimately be Trump vs Kamala Harris since Biden cannot sustain another four years. Should he pass before the end of his term, she is even more unpopular with voters of all stripes.

Where does this leave disaffected Republicans and centrist Democrats?

If they vote Trump, he wins.

If they stay at home and decide not to go out in November and vote Democrat because of the weakness they see in Biden, Trump wins.

But they certainly won’t vote Biden. Nor will they vote for democrats up and down the line who now fear that Biden at the top of the ticket will cost them their jobs.

This is not only an American problem, but also a global problem,

Biden’s foreign policy has been weak, and many mistakes have happened on his watch.

Yet, Trump’s foreign policy would not only be a tragedy for the United States but would also have dangerous consequences globally. NATO would be emasculated, Trump would become once again Putin’s puppet, and the “axis of evil” – Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea – would be strengthened and its reach solidified.

Democrats now face a critical choice – remain with Biden who will likely ensure a Trump victory or find another candidate quickly who can take Trump on at his own game.

In my view, the only viable candidate is Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. He is highly intelligent, a superb communicator, an outstanding debater, and a moderate Democrat who can appeal to centrist voters who remain disgusted and worried with the current choices.

This is the only realistic option open to the Democrats.

For now, the race is on between a convicted felon and a proven liar on the one hand, and, on the other hand, a doddering old man who walks and speaks with difficulty and is leaving voters cold.

The world watches with trepidation in the hope that Democrats make the right choice.

Finally, a word about host broadcaster CNN.

That word is disaster.

A travesty of what once was a professional journalistic network.

Both moderators, Dana Bash and Jake Tapper, refused to hold Trump’s feet to the fire. Rather than challenge his lies and obfuscations, they allowed him to skate past challenging questions and control the agenda in his typical way.

The camera work was also shoddy. Rather than show the President responding to questions with only him in the shot, they used a split screen format that allowed Trump to make faces like a spoilt child while Biden spoke.

The once-credible CNN of old seems to have been replaced by FOX light, much to the ire of many viewers.

All in all, an evening of lies and innuendo, with a hapless old man at the center.

We are watching the unravelling of an empire.

If all that the U.S can produce is two octogenarians as candidates – one babbling lies and one simply babbling without energy -- and a major global television network unwilling or unable to control the flow of lies, we are well on our way to hell in the proverbial handbasket.

Will someone please wake up and shake President Biden out of his determination to lose badly before the US elects Trump by default?