STEP ASIDE, JOE — The Weekly Opine

Pretending things are manageable has run its course. (Photos credit CNN)

Show us your patriotism

Pressure on President Biden to retire is nearing a fever pitch. Less-than-fully-supportive comments, coming from the likes of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) are being joined by flat-out calls, from other prominent legislators, for Biden to drop out of the presidential contest. Many media, e.g., The New York Times editorial board, are aggressively imploring Biden to step aside.

Today, The Weekly Opine concurs. Joe Biden, while more fit to be president than Trump, is nonetheless unfit to be president. Biden is unfit because, following his horrifically embarrassing debate, we’ve learned that performance was not an isolated incident. Reporting from insiders says that with increasing frequency Biden drifts into never-never-land, experiencing bouts of freezing up and losing his train of thought, glassy-eyed with his mouth agape, like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) did several months ago.

Whereas Trump is unfit because he’s a 34x felon who is mentally unhinged and far more dangerous to our safety and prosperity than wobbly Joe Biden. (That’s right, unlike other media, I will not discuss Biden’s lack of fitness to be president without giving equal time to Trump’s more acute lack of fitness.)

Trump’s branded businesses, charitable foundation and university failed after fraudulently ripping off people and not paying vulnerable small vendors. Trump was found guilty of defamation in a civil trial, related to raping E. Jean Carroll. The courts ordered him to pay nearly half a billion dollars because the Trump Organization falsified business records. (Which means he could be on the take from foreign governments, playing an international game of let’s make a deal.)

Because of Trump stocking the Supreme Court with crooked, partisan justices, the official unraveling of U.S. democracy began Monday, July 1, 2024. That’s when the Supreme Court granted U.S. presidents the freedom to, among other things, assassinate political rivals, round up and imprison journalists and put to death doctors who perform abortions. Presidential immunity has George Washington spinning in his grave.

The 3-legged stool of American democracy, made up of Congress, the Executive Branch and Supreme Court, teeters after disastrous decisions by corrupt justices at the Supreme Court. (Photos credit The Weekly Opine)

Meanwhile, the formerly laudable, respected First Lady Jill Biden is apparently tipsy from the trappings of power. Same as Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Dianne Feinstein were, in their respective roles as Supreme Court Associate Justice and U.S. senator. Neither RBG or Feinstein knew when to say “when” and retire gracefully. It’s a malady afflicting many who rise to positions of power and fame. If it’s true (and it is) that power corrupts (Trump), it is equally true that power is selfishly addictive (Biden).

Rather than escort her man to the off-ramp with a measure of dignity and humility, Jill Biden is leading the coverup, working overtime trying to trick the American people into thinking Joe is fine. Debate performance excuses flow like lava after a volcanic eruption. Biden was tired from too much travel; he had a cold; his debate prep team screwed up; the moderators were no good. Excuses are just that… excuses, and they fall on deaf ears.

And Biden’s post-debate mantra, “When I get knocked down, I get back up and fight harder!” leaves me unmoved. In the case of the debate, Biden did not get knocked down. He fell down, all on his own.

The revelation this week by NBC News that Hunter Biden, a convicted felon and recovering drug addict, is now sitting in on high-level meetings at the White House is mind boggling. How out of touch is the Biden administration? No, how dumb are these people? Hunter Biden’s involvement alone should be enough to turn the rising tide against Biden into a tsunami demanding the president drop out of the race.

Kamala’s not the answer (never was)

The notion that only Biden can beat Trump is silly. (Hillary Clinton, who I’ve never much cared for, beat Trump in the popular vote and would have won the electoral college but for her smug, elitist attitude.)

And the notion that Kamala Harris deserves to replace Biden, in part because of a perception that, of all the potential Biden replacements, only she can beat Trump, is also silly. Sounds like nonsense coming from the likes of Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), who played an outsized role in Biden getting elected in 2020 and running again in 2024.

Step 1 in resuscitating American democracy is President Biden patriotically bowing out of the presidential race. Doing so on July 4th would send a powerful signal. (Photo credit The Weekly Opine)

I remember watching TV as a 10-year-old in 1968, when President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not seek, nor accept, the Democratic nomination for a second term. It was a shock! Especially, considering Johnson’s success passing the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. But his lies about Vietnam and the resultant riots in U.S. cities doomed his presidency. Johnson’s vice president, Hubert H. Humphrey, became the nominee and promptly lost the election to crooked, “Tricky Dick” as Richard Nixon was derisively nicknamed.

The idea that Kamala Harris is owed the top slot, if Biden steps aside, is not reality. We’ve all seen many occasions where the leader retires, and the top lieutenant does not get the job. For example, when legendary, national championship-winning football coach Nick Saban recently retired from the University of Alabama, his No. 1 assistant coach was not promoted into the job. Alabama went outside to find their new head coach.

As I wrote in this space during the 2020 campaign, Harris was better suited to be attorney general. With Harris as A.G., it is probable Trump would have been held to account long ago, unlike what’s happened with the slowpoke attorney general, Mr. Milquetoast Merrick Garland, calling the shots.

I stand by Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer as the best choice to replace Biden. But time is not on Democrats’ side. Biden, in a display of patriotism, should announce on July 4th that he is no longer in the race and release his delegates to set about finding another candidate.

As many of us continue to lament, it would be nice (and appropriately fair) if Trump was expeditiously held legally accountable for his plethora of criminal activity. But that ain’t happening. As we’ve seen in South Florida, Georgia and D.C., and even New York with the delay in sentencing until mid-September, the legal system, through myriad delay tactics, an inept and corrupt judge, a lack of common sense judgment by a local district attorney, and now a corrosive Supreme Court, is failing to uphold democracy’s fundamental tenet: that no one is above the law.

No matter. The real judgment day, the real sentencing day, is coming. A day that Trump and his attorneys cannot delay.

November 5, 2024, will be democracy’s day of reckoning, courtesy of the ballot box.