Should I stay or should I go now?

Should I stay or should I go now?

If I go there will be trouble

And if I stay it will be double

So come on and let me know

The Clash, Joe Strummer, Mick Jones

My wife is engaged with friends of ours over whether Biden should step aside. She believes Biden should continue to lead the ticket. They are adamant that he needs to step aside. It’s clear that even more intense conversations are going on about this in and around the Biden camp.

There is no question that Biden’s debate performance was an optical disaster. It reminds one of the Kennedy/Nixon debate, which arguably changed the course of the whole election. Biden seemed frail. He had trouble putting his thoughts together and finishing them. Although 45’s talk was a firehose of incoherent, non sequitur lies and disinformation, he appeared strong, vital and focused. Joe Biden, when 45 was speaking, often appeared to be off somewhere else. He appeared senile. In subsequent events both that evening and in the following days, he was apparently State of the Union Joe. What went wrong at the debate for him is difficult to know.

In his defense, he had a cold, and I am not sure how anyone stands up to the firehose stream of lies 45 spews. Probably better not to debate at all. Which begs the question. The Biden camp wanted the debate and made the challenge. They agreed to the terms and staging of it. How were they so clueless about how hard it would be to match up with 45 under those conditions? A part of me speculates that they need him to realize he can’t carry the torch anymore and should step aside, so they set him up for humiliation. I know that’s far-fetched, and it would be beyond cruel, but I am trying to make sense of the debacle.

Everyone who understands the stakes of this election and wants to preserve democracy is reeling in fear and painful anguish. We are all kinds of emotions all at once, and none of them are good. Cup of panic anyone?

I suppose the one silver lining in all of this is that the debate is very early, there is lots of time to recover before the election. An eternity in political time. Unfortunately, there are some choice clips of Biden stumbling that are sure to find their way into attack commercials in September and October. Maybe they already have.

Supposedly there was a second debate agreed to in September. That’s a hard one for the Biden camp. If they back out, it will be an acknowledgement that Biden isn’t up to it. If they go through with it, well, another performance like the one we witnessed this past week would absolutely be the death of democracy.

There will be lots of polling and lots more rollercoaster emotions in the next week. I wonder if the needle will move much at all. I think a considerable number of us know the stakes of this election and, while we wish we had a younger, more charismatic candidate, it really makes no difference who the candidate is. We are going to do what we have to do to preserve the chance to have a better choice next time around. We know this election is existential for the country.

There are reasons to like the Biden administration and reasons to dislike and be angry with it. But it all pales to insignificance when you consider the alternative, which is 45 and white supremecist, patriarchal, Christian Nationalism as far as the eye can see.

It doesn’t matter who is at the top of the democratic ticket. Change or don’t change. Democracy is at stake and the only party willing to try to save it is the Democratic Party. And I can’t see waisting energy arguing about it unless you actually are in a position to affect the decision. We all need to work on getting anyone who doesn’t understand the moment we are in to understand it. Then we need to join them in supporting whoever the Democratic nominee turns out to be in November.