Submitted by Sam Rosenfeld, Representative Town Meeting, District 1, Greenwich Democratic Town Committee Member
All the grumbling about President Biden being old, mentally unstable, or whatever you want to call the failure of a performance at the CNN debate grew to a panicked frenzy.
Now, it’s official: Joe won’t go. Fantastic!
There are two very good reasons we should all be grateful he isn’t bowing out.
The first reason: Joe knows how the office of the President works better than almost anyone, and has been using that power more effectively and responsibly than anyone else who has a shot of beating Donald Trump in November. He’s spent more years of his very long life in elected office than not, and has seen many permutations of our three branches of government in action.
He will have served in the White House for twelve years by the time he’s sworn in as President of the United States in 2025.
Biden was sworn in as commander in chief during the height of a global pandemic, after a divisive administration which did not agree to a peaceful transition of power or even accept the election results, and aggressive international adversaries attempting to seize on his predecessor’s withdrawal from the global stage. Since day one, he’s made consequential decisions that have made our country a better, safer place in which to work and live than when he took office.
There are more than a few Democrats who have tried to tear down the Biden candidacy and presidency, and they have all failed miserably because “Sleepy Joe” can do this job in his sleep.
The second reason: his mental condition is stellar compared with the other guy. If you think Joe’s capacity is too diminished to serve because he occasionally struggles with words, you were successfully distracted from the word salad spewing forth from his opponent. It’s the first and hopefully last time you’ll hear a 78 year old former President, one of Trump’s physical appearance no less, say on national television “I did not have sex with that porn star,” or accuse a fellow President of being a “secret Palestinian.”
Donald, who by the same logic being thrown at Joe is also too old for the White House, has already graced us with nearly a decade of “covfefe” nonsense. He required a rotating carousel of grown ups in his cabinet who kept official messages from our government sounding in any way coherent for the few days they stayed in Donald’s good graces before he fired them. In fact, the speech he’s best known for was his own sore loser attempt to get a mob of supporters to lynch his Vice President on Capitol Hill and overthrow the United States government.
Biden, on the other hand, has surrounded himself with an administration of professionals who are capable of running the executive branch of the United States, processing nuanced situations, and doing so without fear that the President’s social media activity is going to careen international relations in a random direction at a moment’s notice. His staffers are also, notably, not afraid that he is going to transform the United States of America into an autocracy, or start rampaging if you rightfully assert that his inauguration wasn’t the largest in history.
Think about this another way: the loudest criticism of Biden as a candidate is that his writing is logical and intelligible, and he can effectively deliver unifying speeches, but he mixes up his words off script. By this reasoning, pundits would claim Thomas Jefferson, a brilliant founding father yet a notoriously poor public speaker, had no business being President.
As soon as you look outside of the voting criteria of “which old man speaks and tweets more words per minute” and expand your point of view to “which of these old men has been and will be a better President,” supporting Joe Biden makes all the sense in the world. President Biden stands for issues that the vast majority of American voters agree on, such as fighting climate change and protecting women’s reproductive rights. Trump is staunchly opposed to fighting climate change, and seems wholly unconcerned with protecting women, in acts ranging from official to highly unofficial.
So, folks, let’s cut the malarkey and appreciate Joe Biden for the strong candidate he is, while refocusing our outrage and efforts against the words with which Donald Trump so fluidly promises to scorch the Earth the moment he takes office.
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