Disclaimer: I’ve felt absolutely sick since the debate. I had nightmares for the next three nights, and not explicitly about the election, but that has definitely triggered some kind of existential anxiety that I wasn’t previously experiencing and that I am honestly having kind of a hard time keeping a lid on.
BUT, I’m also trying not to let myself be tossed about by the waves of reporters chasing scoops from anonymous “operatives” and “donors.”
He’s an old man, he looks more feeble than he used to, and it’s getting harder to distinguish between his gaffes and his stutter and true confusion. I get it. Our candidate is an inarticulate geezer at a time when we need an orator with a flaming sword of righteous truth. But that person…hasn’t shown up. So it seems like we probably oughta catch our breath and assess what is actually possible to accomplish in a deeply polarized nation of 260M voters spread across a huge landmass within the next 4 months.
Re: Harris, I accept that a lot of Black voters don’t like her personally and for a variety of reasons, but just as many or more Black voters are no longer tolerant of an “I’ll vote for a Black woman, but not *that* Black woman” mentality, and there’s mostly only one reason for that. Doing that now, with these stakes, is an insult of the highest order. She’s the Vice President of the United Goddamn States, and she deserves some credit for having been a heartbeat from the presidency for four years already. Thinking that the party can pass over her and anoint someone else without a PAINFUL amount of backbiting and infighting is a total delusion. There’s no time for that. This is too important to take our eye off the general election. Primary season is over.
There are only two realistic options here: stay the course with Joe, or hand off to Kamala. That’s it. Everything else is magical/panicked thinking. When we engage in navel-gazey criticisms for why Biden *should* step aside, we do the right’s work for them. There’s Biden, and Harris, and that’s it. For better or worse, we’re going to have to dance with the ones that brung us.
When you have a nominee you don’t spend the campaign moping about how they’re not the ideal candidate. Especially now, the only object is to win. Act like it.
