Is there a plan b after the Atlanta debacle? The Democrats saw it coming, Joe Biden’s debacle, but not on the catastrophic scale in which it was crudely, cruelly staged for ninety minutes on CNN screens Thursday night. And now to the political blow comes the utmost confusion about what to do.
The issue of Joe Biden’s agecombined with his growing and evident difficulty in supporting such a heavy role, has been on the agenda since his re-nomination was put on the table by the interested party with the support of his family and the leaders of the Democratic Party, but also from the circles neighbors that matter, like the New York Times, progressive blogs and TV, Hollywood, the big universities, a front that saw the president in office as the one best equipped to defeat the New York impostor again. In the Democratic Party, if not whispered in informal meetings, he had dared to question the choice of re-nomination. A general attitude more in keeping with the style of the CPSU of Brezhnev’s time than with the rules of a large Western party.
Of course, it must be said that Biden has recently suffered a clear worsening of his psychophysical conditions – at least from what it appears and from what was seen in last night’s televised duel – probably due to the legal issues of his son Hunter.
On his recent European tour, then especially at a fundraising gala in Los Angeles, he appeared in a state of confusion and physical distress. He was struck by the image, at the Los Angeles event, of Barack Obama gently but firmly leading him off stage while he appears impaled and frozen.
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Debate, Biden’s Catastrophe
It was thought – by the staff and the strategists – that they could control the situation, with all sorts of care and caution, a protective belt around the president, to the point of imposing a format tailored for him on CNN, a debate without an audience, with controlled microphones, with the screen split in half, and other devices that should have supported the president and acted as a network for him, but which did nothing but highlight his weakness. An inadequacy that is all the more blatant in the face of a challenger who, let’s not forget, made his public fortune as the creator and host of a reality show like The Apprentice, for a dozen years, a character who moves on stage and on screen like a fish in water.
A pile of lies, yours? Of ostentatious atrocities? Trump is a serial liar, he has “the morals of an alley cat”, Joe Biden called him. Yes, but they knew well who he was, who the president would have in front of him, both himself and his advisors (but it would be enough to watch the previous TV duels again) that, in a match like this, the facts don’t matter. It would have been a duel between personalities, between characters, in which Biden – according to the White House script – would have had to play the part of the good guy who exposes the bad guy and turns him on the grill.
The idea of holding a debate well in advance, which in the past had always been held after the conventions, was meant to make the challenge plausible in those terms, decency versus indecency, good versus evil, democracy versus subversion.
The presidential debate makes this plan vanishand with it puts its protagonist in serious crisis. The debate now opens the way to a referendum on Biden, not on Trump, as the White House had hoped.
Politics remains even more on the sidelines now, the discussion among Democrats focuses solely on the candidate, on his ability to win on November 5 and to drag with his victory the Democratic candidates running for the Senate and the House of Representatives and for a myriad of local elected offices. An immense stake. That finds the Democratic Party unprepared. In panic.
In the coming days, pressure will intensify for Biden to step back and facilitate a process of designating another presidential ticket. The media, first and foremost, are interested in making this happen, even the friendly ones. The ball was kicked off by the New York Times with a series of interventions by its strongest signatures, starting with Thomas Friedman. A renewed and different presidential race is an attraction that the media will hardly give up.
But it’s plan B that’s missing. Not that there is a lack of possible alternative candidates. There are at least three, like the governors of California, Gavin Newsom, of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, of Maruland, Wes Moore. The first has already covered his tracks and it doesn’t seem to be just for tactics, while Whitmer and Moore would be an excellent ticket. For now, they are dreams. The problem is that, apart from Kamala Harris, who however no one is proposing, because she is too tied to the “loser”, no one is prepared for such a demanding undertaking, which will take place in the space of just a few weeks. The risk of getting burned is very high. The most likely ones are instead thinking about the next round, when neither Biden nor Trump will be around anymore.
In the meantime, those who are most pressing are the donor who invested millions in a difficult and risky presidential race with the idea of stopping the subversive rather than because they were enthusiastic about a candidate like Biden.
They too will put pressure on the Democrats to implement an emergency plan immediately. How it can then be implemented is itself a political problem. The main path would be towards a Democratic convention (in the middle of August in Chicago) brokered, open, similar to the congress of a European party, where the four thousand delegates and superdelegates will discuss a shortlist of candidates, which inevitably includes Kamala Harris and others who will gradually emerge).
