Well, this is a fine mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.

For the past eight years, I’ve been among the tens of millions singularly focused on getting a neo-fascist would-be despot in a red ballcap out of the Oval Office and keeping him out. Donald Trump represents an unprecedented threat to American democracy—at this point, file that under “dog bites man.” Approaching the 2024 election, his third attempt to take power (he’s batting .500 so far), right wing voter suppression, electoral subversion, and political violence all seemed likely to be key factors that might vault him back into office and put an end to 240 years of participatory democracy in the United States. But while a white nationalist autocracy remains very much a threat, more than ever in fact, the likely means of its ascent suddenly looks radically different.                                                         

Show of hands: who thought Joe Biden’s stubbornness would be the thing that ultimately toppled American democracy by letting Trump back in office?

I fear that’s where we’re headed unless a dramatic change takes place tout suite.

STAND DOWN MARGARET JOE

Lots of informed, serious voices on the left have continued to call for Biden to face reality and do the right thing for the good of the republic. Prominent among them, George Clooney made news yesterday with an op-ed in the New York Times politely but firmly calling for Biden to step aside. (For that matter, the Times’s own editorial board had published a similarly scathing plea only two days before. )

Naturally, conservatives will sneer (“Shut up and act!)”; the only actors who they think are entitled to political opinions are Scott Baio and Kirk Cameron. Even some Democrats will bristle at such boldness, a new high watermark for Hollywood chutzpah, especially for a party that has long been scorned for its showbiz connections. But George’s essay was eloquent, respectful, and right on target. He is leveraging his fame and influence for good, and good on him. Best of all, as an insider who just appeared at a massive fundraising event for Biden only eleven days before the disastrous debate, he could attest firsthand to the President’s diminished acuity.

Hey, maybe Clooney can be president. I’d take him over any Republican you care to name. But he’s just an actor, you say! Hell, so is Trump….in fact, Trump’s not even an actor, he’s just a game show host.

Meanwhile, Republican strategists reportedly are planning for a Trump landslide, and they might not be wrong. (Even Sen. Michael Bennet, a Democrat from Colorado, has warned of it, on national television no less.) We always assumed this race would be razor close, like the last two, even though in any rational world Biden would be winning by 30 points. (This just in: we ain’t in no rational world.) Instead we may be looking not only at a loss, but a blowout for the neo-fascist party, as gobsmacking and shameful as that would be as an indictment of the American character for all the world to see.  

For several years now, while livid at the neo-fascists of the Republican Party, I’ve also been angry at my own feckless side for mounting an insufficiently robust campaign to defeat them. But now that anger at the left has passed into a new dimension, one of utter disgust, and weirdly, it is making me slightly less furious with the right. Sure, they’re monsters. But who can blame them for taking over the country when we’ve made it so easy for them to do so? If we’re gonna commit political malpractice by sticking with Biden, the GOP deserves to win.

Down on the South Jersey shore last weekend, the oats-feeling among the denizens of MAGA Nation was palpable. Houses that in the past have flown Trump flags but had taken them down over the past few years had them back up again. Big-ass Jeeps and pickup trucks with Blue Lives Matter and Punisher decals, cruising around flying giant American and Trump flags, were far more prevalent than they have been of late, not to mention a noticeable uptick in the number of assholes yelling insults at me because of the Biden sticker on my car. There were even giant Trump flags being flown by sunbathers on the beach. (So pleasant!)

These people are clearly emboldened, convinced now that they are going to win in November and preparing for the retribution that will follow. But I shouldn’t say “retribution,” because there is nothing they have been targeted for or victimized by that they should seek retribution for. They purely want to exercise their power over those they hate. And even though they are a minority, we seem like we are foolishly going to put them in a position to do it.

WILL ROGERS, ORGANIZATION EXPERT

As I noted last week, Joe Biden deserves Olympian credit for all he has done to save the country after the nightmare of the Trump years. But if he stubbornly insists on remaining the Democratic nominee—which is to say, if we let him do that—he will destroy his legacy. In that event, as a John the Baptist-like Mark Leibovich has been saying long before the debate, and long before this view became commonplace in the Democratic Party, Joe will be remembered only for the final act of his political career, not the massive good he did between 2016 and now.

But clearly Biden himself cannot see that.

To that point, Democratic leaders were said to be as alarmed by Biden’s laissez faire, business-as-usual reaction in response to the debate debacle as they were by the debate itself, a sign that he truly did not appreciate how bad that performance was. He certainly did not mount an all-hands-on-deck campaign of damage control, and the measures he did take, like the Stephanopoulos interview, didn’t come close to repairing the damage. What could? Even if he had knocked it out of the park it wouldn’t have been enough. And he didn’t. (It was more like a groundout to first.)

The exchange with George that particularly infuriated many was this one:

STEPHANOPOULOS: And if you stay in and Trump is elected and everything you’re warning about comes to pass, how will you feel in January?

BIDEN: I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the good as job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.

No, that is NOT what this is all about.

But as my friend Aaron Naperstak says, as long as Joe gets his participation trophy…..

Far be it from me to question the political instincts of a man who was first elected to the US Senate while I was still in short pants, but Joe Biden is beginning to look like he’s suffering from Dunning-Kruger effect when it comes to his assessment of the state of the race. Many pundits have noted the irony that in his belief that he alone can beat Trump (a second time), he is skirting dangerously close to Trump’s own egomaniacal “I alone can fix it” mentality.

To quote another US president: I cannot tell a lie. I am losing patience with him and his ego.

Joe is beginning to remind me of Hindenburg, another enfeebled head of state who facilitated the rise of a dictatorial monster. (Volker Ullrich fans: I know it’s not a perfect analogy. Paul was cajoled—or strongarmed—into powersharing with a despot-in-waiting. Joe seems poised, out of sheer ego and obstinance, to allow one to seize power. But indulge me.)

One narrative is that Democratic “elites” are calling for Biden’s head over the will of “the people,” whom, we are told, don’t even remember the debate! (Debate? What debate?). But as Ezra Klein and Tim Miller recently discussed, the actual evidence shows just the opposite: it’s Democratic power brokers who—thus far, at least in public—are defending Biden against a groundswell of public sentiment that, we love ya, Joe, but ya gotta go.

Is it hard to retire and leave the spotlight at the end of an illustrious career? Sure. Ask Brett Favre, or Willie Mays. But it’s not up to the player, or shouldn’t be, especially when the stakes are this high. With all due respect to Joe and all he has done for this country, we cannot let him hold the party, the election, and the country hostage. If we do, per above, we’ll get what we deserve.

INFLECTION POINT AHEAD

Before the debate, I was firmly in the camp of “Don’t knock Biden, it only helps Trump.” But after the debate, that no longer obtains. I won’t fault SNL for mocking Joe when it returns in the fall, which used to enrage me. The damage is done, and we would do well to acknowledge it and fix the problem while we can. Saying out loud that he’s a dead man walking—politically speaking—is not going to hurt him any more than he’s already hurt himself, or than pretending he can win is going to make it happen.

That said:

The time is approaching when I will stop writing screeds on this topic. If Joe Biden does not soon step aside, or is forced aside, if he is the nominee of his party after the Democratic National Convention in (gulp) Chicago next month, there will no longer be any point in bemoaning his liabilities. At that point, such complaints will in fact only do harm. If Joe is the nominee, I will STFU and concentrate on making the case that, old and doddering or not, he still represents an infinitely infinitely infinitely better choice than a openly corrupt convicted felon, serial liar, adjudicated sex offender, racist, misogynist, seditionist whose party has openly published its plans to destroy the United States as we know it.

However, I will have a hard time making that case to my snickering conservative friends who for months (years, even) have been bathing in a vicious right wing campaign to portray Biden as old and senile. That’s a hard portrait to counter when Joe goes on national TV and seems to prove it.

In the past two weeks, the people of Britain have ejected the Tories after 14 years in power, the people of Iran defied the odds and elected a reformist (by Iranian standards) who favors a nuclear deal with the US (making him saner than any Republican), and the French left and center made a sensible deal to keep LePen and her Vichy Redux party out of power. Can we Americans prove ourselves as wise and as grownup as our foreign friends?

There is still time for us to change course and get a stronger candidate atop the ticket. Soon there will not be. The proof of the wisdom of that course of action is that the Republicans are terrified of it.

If the Democratic Party can’t get its act together sufficiently to deal with this situation and do the sensible thing for itself and the country in the midst of this epic existential crisis, my middling disgust with the Party—heretofore massively overwhelmed by my Everest-sized loathing for the fascist, Trumpified GOP—will turn to open contempt. And I won’t be alone. We’ve watched the Republican party destroy itself, morphing into a death cult of personality. If the Dems botch this, and if Trump wins and has a downballot coattail effect that carries into the House and Senate (in addition to the Supreme Court he already owns), and if he wields absolute power in a second term, come 2028 there may be no more Democratic Party left to pity and mourn.

Tick tock, and watch this space.

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Photo: Evan Vucci/AP