According to the New York Times, President Biden has dropped out of the race!
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/07/21/us/trump-biden-election
To tell the truth I was not expecting that, was giving it less than 50% likelihood. But I think it is probably for the best, for him and for the country.
I feel badly for him. It was a hard decision, and he has served honorably. Which is more than I can say for some people.
Now the question is, who will be the candidate? If it is not Kamala Harris, it will be a really bad, cynical look.
He has endorsed Harris, and, with luck, the circular firing squad that is the Democratic Party will step down and the transition will be smooth.
ReplyDeleteI've heard many Democratic friends here say that it makes sense for Joe to be VP, just flip the ticket. Doesn't make a lot of sense if Biden's age is a problem, but I understand that it sends a message that Biden is not being put out to pasture entirely.
As of about 3:30 it seems to me it's virtually impossible that Kamala Harris will not be the nominee. The idea of Biden being VP strikes me as insane. The VP is suppose to be someone who can step in as president immediately should it be necessary. If Biden is too old to be president, he's way too old to step in to take over from Harris a year (or four years) in a time of crisis.
ReplyDeleteI heard some speculation on MSNBC about Gretchen Whitmer as Harris's VP. I have no problems with a woman president who has a woman vice-president, but I don't imagine everyone thinks like me. I think Hillary Clinton would probably have won if there hadn't been a number of people could not bring themselves to vote for a woman president (although Clinton did win the popular vote).
I am much relieved by Biden's choice. It wasn't so much that I was doubtful of his ability to continue as president. I was doubtful about his ability to campaign successfully. Bizarrely, many "conservatives" (including some in my immediate family) who did not believe Biden was really in charge as president. They believed that Obama was running the show, with Biden as some kind of puppet. Anyone who denied this was considered laughably naive.
From what I have read, Biden and Obama had a bit of an uneasy relationship. Obama waited a while before he endorsed Biden for 2020.
DeleteI would like to see Pete Buttigieg be her veep candidate.
Yeah, I don't think it would work for Biden to be Harris' vp.
The withdrawal of Biden means that his delegates are free to vote for whomever they want at the convention. The Democrats need to show the nation democracy at work, not the heavy hand of donors or quick coalescence around Harris or any other candidate. We don't need a repeat of everybody choosing Biden because they were afraid that Bernie might win.
ReplyDeleteThe Democrats need to make Republican domination of the country through the Supreme Court, the House, and now maybe the Senate and Presidency to be the big issue. It is fear of the right that has stopped them in Britain, France and India.
People have heard all the arguments against Trump. Trump loves nothing better than to be the center of attention. The reality is that he is unpredictable. How about taking some of the attention off him.
Attacking Vance as much as Trump may be the way to throw the Republicans. Vance does have extreme views on abortion (only the life of the mother, but not incest or rape). If I remember the Ohio vote on abortion was something that 56% in favor. I find it difficult to believe that Republican women will vote for Trump-Vance and the possibility of a Republican House and Senate. No one should believe that a national law restricting abortion is unlikely.
The Democrats need an attack dog VP to go after Vance on the many issues that he is vulnerable.
... and it took all of six minutes for Republicans to start sloganeering: Too old to run, too old to serve, remove Biden from office now.
ReplyDeleteYes, have heard lots of folks here in the cornfield say that Biden was Obama's puppet. They also believe Michelle Obama is a man and that the Clintons are blood-drinking pedophiles. And that the Democrats take orders from George and Amal Clooney, who is out to destroy Israel.
All of this could have been averted had Biden stuck to his original plan to be a one-term prez and brought Harris out as his preferred successor and let her talk about stuff besides abortion and race. That would have opened the primary field up, too. At this point the party could legitimately be accused of dithering. And that looks bad to Americans who want decisive leadership.
But coulda, woulda, shoulda.
Can Democrats win with the hand they've dealt themselves? I seriously doubt it. I'm hoping my pessimism merely reflects the rightwing idiocy we're surrounded by here.
But I think it's Trump's race to lose at this point.
I say bring it on, and go Blue! Which is a weird thing for a registered Republican to say.
DeleteThere will be a younger, more mentally present candidate but the policies with respect to Israel and its genocide in Gaza won't change. First things first, Kamala makes a reassuring phone call to her superior which is not Biden:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/03/04/readout-of-vice-president-kamala-harris-call-with-prime-minister-benjamin-netanyahu-of-israel/
I will not be voting for her or the Orange Mutant. Genocide is genocide, not negotiable. I'm sure there will be plenty of nice talk about how it'll be all peace and puppies in the Mideast in the year 3247, but the flow of arms and money and the deaths will continue until there are no more left to die. I think the loss of democracy in the 2024 election will be just a formality.
George Conway has a new initiative.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.psychopac.org/
I don't think Biden is capable of serving in the presidency for another term, but in some ways his candidacy is less risky than Harris's. Harris failed badly in her previous run to the White House. And she developed a reputation for running a dysfunctional VP office, at least in the early days of her vice presidency. It may be that Biden's war chest and his political team can save Harris this time around. As for the alternative names being floated, none of them has even tried to run in a Democratic national primary. Any of them may crash and burn.
ReplyDeleteTrump should be beatable. Even though he was leading Biden in the key swing states, he has a low ceiling. More people dislike him than like him. Despite Biden's calamitous debate performance, the sympathy generated by the assassination attempt on Trump, and a reasonably successful Republican convention, Trump's lead over Biden has barely budged. Here are recent (pre-Biden-announcement) poll numbers from one newsletter from a couple of days ago:
NPR/PBS/Marist: Trump 43% - Biden 42% - Kennedy 8%
Ipsos/Reuters: Trump 40% - Biden 39% - Kennedy 11%
Fox News: Trump 44% - Biden 41% - Kennedy 10%
Washington Post/ABC: Trump 43% - Biden 42% - Kennedy 9%
New York Times/Siena: Trump 42%-Biden 37%-Kennedy 8%
Kamala Harris was green (as in inexperienced) when she assumed the vice presidency. Now she is much less so, and any of the other possible candidates would be more green (greener?).
DeleteGetting shot at and missed (well mostly) did generate a sympathy boost for Trump; among Republicans. But I don't think it brought over any Democrats. And I think the rather triumphalistic, celebratory Republican convention was a turn-off to a lot of people, including some swing voters. It was certainly a a turn-off to me (easy-peasy, we got it made in the shade,we can beat 'ol Joe with one hand tied behind our back).
So I'm saying, bring it on, Kamala. Give it all you've got.
Biden should also transfer the presidency to Harris. Then we could see what she would really do at least in foreign policy. If she reined in the Israeli Killing Frenzy, I would vote for her in a second. Younger people can change. It's a lot harder for a tired, old person like Biden who has been on cruise control. He's in the last century. But Harris could prove to me that she can steer her own course, that her humanity is still intact. I'm not asking for a lot but give me SOMETHING. Apparently, Michael Moore is suggesting this very thing.
DeleteStanley, I would be for whoever is our president to apply some leverage to Israel in the form of shutting off weapons. But I don't think peace will happen until the two sides doing the fighting are serious about making it happen.
DeleteWash Post had this about Harris's stance on Israel-Gaza:
DeleteA large part of a president’s job is dealing with foreign policy, and Harris is remarkably undefined on this front. But that could be to Democrats’ benefit, said Democratic strategist Matt Duss, because Biden’s low points in polling have come from issues largely tied to foreign policy. Biden’s staunch support for Israel, especially at the start of the war in Gaza, has been a particular wedge in the Democratic Party coalition.
In foreign policy circles, Harris is believed to have a more critical view of the Israeli government’s handling of the war in Gaza than Biden, even pushing to get lines about the need for humanitarian aid to Gaza in key speeches.
“We have also been clear that far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed, that Israel must do better to protect innocent civilians,” she said at an address earlier this year.
Harris has been “pushing for a more sympathetic policy toward Palestinians,” Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) said after Biden’s announcement Sunday, adding that she can “build a broad coalition around the issue.”
“Even if she doesn’t announce an intention to dramatically shift foreign policy, I think she’s going to have an easier time than Biden, because she hasn’t been the one driving it,” Duss said.
Biden is a foreign-policy throwback, which is the main reason I might have considered voting for him. If he had stayed in the race (I nearly posted something here late last night, giving all the reasons his announcement yesterday was the wrong decision), I probably would have voted for him in November, even fully recognizing his inability to be president, and even fully recognizing that the outcome of such a scenario, should Biden have won in November, was that Kamala would be president very soon anyway. It's still entirely possible that Biden won't make it through this term and she'll enter the November election as the incumbent.
DeleteI rate foreign policy a more important set of concerns this cycle than any domestic policies.
Anyone who is not willing to deter aggressors like Putin and the mullahs is not serious about building peace, in my opinion. That alone disqualifies Trump and Vance; they seem to be from the Tucker Carlson school of Putin-worship and appear more than willing to toss Ukraine into Putin's loving embrace.
That Harris is a cipher on foreign policy isn't a feature in my book, it's a bug. That she may be more inclined than Biden to kowtow to the Iranian-funded American Palestinian anti-Semitic activists and their American useful idiots is a big red flag for me.
Governing by populism is a really sh*tty idea. I think Biden understood that, or at least his instincts ran in the right direction. I fear we're going to be missing him terribly before very long. It's not his fault he grew old and feeble. On the other hand, it's entirely his fault that Kamala Harris is now his anointed, shoe-in successor. Let's hope she shows more mettle than I expect from her. First job: figure out a way to beat Trump. Next: don't screw up the entire world. I'm not optimistic on either front.
Jim, sounds to me like you want Ronald Reagan. I agree that populism is bad. But I have to disagree that foreign policy is more important than domestic policy this cycle. We actually have to live with what happens here at home.
DeleteI see Putin as the #1 international problem. Maybe he should be more of a priority than anything domestically, but that's a hard sell to Americans who can't pay the bills, much less save for old age, purchase a home, and who don't feel too secure about the future of their own country. Or the human race.
DeleteJean, I agree with you that Putin’s territorial eexpansion desires represent a huge threat and one f the most 8mpirtant reasons that trump,should not regain the presidency. People who discount the importance of this are very shortsighted. Putin has already brought Belarus into its orbit, and apparently Georgia is also. The PM of Georgia is rooting for trump.
Deletehttps://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/07/21/7466703/
https://apnews.com/article/georgia-democracy-protests-eu-media-human-rights-4d6da6d13838074500787cf535cb1a86
Katherine, re: Ronald Reagan: guilty as charged!
DeleteReagan was rather selective with his tyrants. Hated commies like the Sandinistas and Castro, but wasn't too fussy about the Marcoses and that ilk. If I recall, the GOP Cold War idea was that allied dictators weren't fomenting revolution outside their borders, just torturing and killing their own people.
DeleteBack in 1987, when I was working for the empire, we were worried that all the international free trade was going to kill our manufacturing ability and our ability to make war. Our bailiwick was precision optics which supports fire control, the ability to see targets and land ammunition on targets from a distance. Magnifying sights, night vision, laser rangefinders, laser designators. We tried to get a clause in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to mandate 50% of all optics be bought from US manufacturers. It was turned down because it would violate free trade. So, our march toward industrial collapse was begun under the Reagan Administration. We still have a specialized optics industry in this country because my consortium program introduced sophisticated CNC techniques to the manufacture of optics. It was an uphill battle against the forces of neoliberal greedy traitors. Now, we can't even develop and field a new mobile cannon. We'll have to buy it from Germany. If we get into wars, our anemic arsenal of democracy will have to fight the muscular Chinese arsenal of totalitarianism. Yeah, let's stir it up all over the world right now. Rah, rah, sis boom bah. It's not triumph of the will. It's triumph of steel, titanium, aluminum, fuel, manufacturing.
DeleteStanley, you make some good points about our having farmed out our "defense"* raw materials to the point we're vulnerable now.
DeleteFWIW, Biden is much more of an internationalist than Trump. I don't know where Kamala sits on that continuum. If she wants to make friends with moderate persuadables, she could be vocally supportive of NATO and other US alliances. And if she can find a way to ease Netanyahu out of office, she'd be doing us, Palestinians, Israelis and the rest of the world a big favor.
I don't think Biden should resign so Harris can audition for three months. But Stanley's post reminds us that, polls and personalities aside, there are actual issues at stake.
ReplyDeleteOn the national level, I'm looking at candidates that will:
1. Maintain a pandemic response department that will look at lessons learned from COVID.
2. Allow NOAA to gather info on climate change without interference and heed scientific recommendations.
3. Re-examine safety net programs to make them more efficient by cutting fat, not recipients. Specifically, get rid of the tax cap on Social Security and look for additional ways to help keep it solvent.
4. Re-examine our relationship with Israel and other nations in light of their value as as allies.
5. Pass DACA, for heaven's sake.
"I don't think Biden should resign so Harris can audition for three months."
DeleteAfter Kamala's incredibly strong start, I'm finding I've already mentally transitioned away from Biden to Kamala. I honestly think he should just step down and let her lead both the country and the party. Otherwise we're in this sort of weird split-screen reality where the (very real) institutional power resides in one person but the (equally real) political power belongs to another.
He really is King Lear now. Right? Does Kamala have a sister? :-)
Well it would be the same with any president who had served two terms, or like Johnson, decided that he wouldn't seek a second term. This way Kamala can concentrate on running, and Biden can take care of actually governing. I think he is still up to that, just not campaigning on top of it.
Delete...and it turns out, Kamala Harris really does have a sister! And she's active in politics - she chaired her sister's presidential campaign in 2019. Her name is Goneril. JK, it's Regan. No, still kidding, it's really Maya.
DeleteYou'd think they had better things to do at a historic time like this, but both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are still sending me emails!
ReplyDeleteI think the frequency tripled after the withdrawal of Biden and his replacement by Harris. It is incessant. I have to turn off the dinger on my phone.
DeleteI wonder about people struggling and killing each other over territory that may become much less habitable with climate change. If the rainfall decreases in the area, the fresh water aquifer will become more saline as it is in contact with the Mediterranean. Drought will reduce crop yields in an already challenging environment. Israel already is heavily dependent on desalinization, energy-intensive and expensive, to provide water for its population. And the heat waves will get worse. Is Israel or Palestine or whatever name you give it even ultimately sustainable?
ReplyDeleteI think it's always been a challenging place to live, even in biblical times. But you're right, it could get worse, and end up with people fighting over what is basically desert.
DeleteSome people we know have made pilgrimages there, of course that was before the present war. They said it was peaceful and a very spiritual experience, even though it is an arid terrain. The company I retired from has plants in Israel, one of them is near Masada. There were both Israelis and Palestinians working there. I think it could have worked for them to live in peace, if the flames of war hadn't been fanned. Now I'm not sure if they can walk it back.
It's hard to know how the effects of global warming will shake out, but none of it looks good.
DeleteRaber thinks Michigan real estate values will go sky high in the next 25 years. We don't have many extreme heat alerts and will have fewer tornadoes as Tornado Alley shifts south and east. No hurricanes, less flooding.
But toxic algae blooms and "red zone" AQI days from Canadian wildfires in summer are increasing. We also have many more beach closure dates due to e. Coli outbreaks. A bigger population would stress already poor infrastructure. Aquifers are in danger from unregulated tapping by Nestle and other companies. Dwindling snow in the Lower Peninsula is causing lake levels to shrink. Invasive species of carp in the Great Lakes, deer everywhere, and plants like loosestrife in marshes are threatening ecological balance.
Hard to know which of these new threats will reach a tipping point first.
"Childless cat lady." JD Vance's new moniker for Harris. The man is fit only to be scraped off her shoe on a roadside curb.
ReplyDeleteI am reading that he said that in an interview in 2021, in which he mentioned Kamala Harris, AOC, and Pete Buttigieg, by name (maybe some other people that I forgot!). He said that the Democratic party consists of people like that who have no stake in the future because they have no children. Pretty offensive. And apparently he doesn't count adopted children or stepchildren.
DeleteHe is said to be a convert to Catholicism. Would he say that priests and nuns have no stake in the future?
Is there a woman alive who doesn't know know the insinuations and contempt packed into those three words: defective, unfeeling, frigid, loner, unstable, sexless, emasculating, pushy, man-hating, petty, bitchy.
DeleteHe might as well have called her the c-word.
Gender and color are irrelevant. It's what they want for the citizenry and do they really care? I don't have any children and I care about the future, especially worried about climate. Vance has three kids and denies anthropogenic climate change. Vance is a femtobrain with no class. His Krischun (I refuse to blaspheme the Lord's name) nationalism is giving Christ a bad name. He also sounds like one of those people who think they can jump start the Second Coming by enabling Israel. On the other hand, I'm not one who assumes better qualities come automatically with the female gender. There are too many historical and personally encountered examples that indicate otherwise. I would have been ecstatic with a President Warren. She has everything right but not on Israel, which is now a problem for me.
DeleteOf course women aren't inherently better than men. That's not what I'm saying. Vance is denigrating Harris et al in a way that has always been reserved for specifically for women in the workplace. It's never been enough to just be really good at your job. You have to smile, look nice, know how the Bunn machine works, and clear paper jams in the printer.
DeleteMost of all, you have to be grateful that the Men in Charge are giving li'l ol' you a chance to play in the big leagues.
I noticed today, Vance hit on that in gratitude theme: Harris isn't sufficiently grateful for being an American and therefore is incapable of leading.
I get that you don't want to vote for anyone who doesn't have the right views in Israel and global warming. Fine. Those are issues.
But understand that Vance's insults have zero to do with issues and everything to do with some kind of rad-trad notions about what women are for.
I'm not saying you said women are better than men. Some people do, as if being a woman or black automatically makes them progressive. It one of my personal gripes. I actually didn't expect a lot from Obama and was not surprised when he bailed out the Wall Street grifters or when, after leaving the presidency, he went on a vacation with billionaire Branson. That's his crowd. I'm not. Anyway, Vance's sexist comments are stupid and lame, as expected. Aren't people capable of embarrassment anymore? How does he say the things he does without his gums bleeding and flaming methane coming out of his ears? Maybe it's good for Harris that he's saying it. Trump says half the bad things and he says the other half more clearly. Pissing off enough woman voters may lose it for the Orange Mutant unless they've already pissed off their limit.
DeleteOn the intermittent occasions the Trumpified GOP manages to achieve political lift-off, culture warmongering is its rocket fuel. Vance is capable of being thoughtful, but that isn't why Trump added him to the ticket, and I suspect Vance himself thinks that isn't what got him elected to the Senate.
DeleteAll of which is to say: I don't expect substantive attacks on Democratic policy from Vance.
In the conservative media, I see theorizing that Harris can be thin-skinned, and may be brittle. Expect Trump, Vance and their many surrogates to test this theory in coming weeks by making very personal attacks against her in an effort to upset her and throw her off her political rhythm.
Harris, for her part, dished out the personal attacks in Milwaukee earlier today, characterizing Trump as a "perpetrator", a "predator", a "fraudster", and a "cheater". Those seem accurate enough, and perhaps it's refreshing to hear someone say those things bluntly, but they are very personal attacks. Trump will try to hit back hard.
It seems to me that if something is both true and relevant, it is not a "personal attack."
Delete"Brittle." There's another word men love to pitch at women. I guess cuz we crack like china dolls under pressure. What next? "Hissy fit"?
DeleteI think Harris' past history as a prosecutor will stand her in good stead in fielding Trump's vitriol. She is used to facing crooks and liars. Not to mention sexual predators.
DeleteHarris would not be my first pick as prez candidate. She's another limousine liberal. I doubt she has much understanding of what it's like to be me--rural, broke, chronically ill elder taking care of another chronically ill elder--given that so far she's talked mostly about race and abortion. I was not impressed with her grandstanding about Roe during the Kavanaugh hearing.
DeleteBut going forward, she could do the nation a service by keeping her campaign focused on and broadening the range of issues she talks about.
So far I have not seen her resort to name calling. Yes, she has characterized Trump as a sex offender and a fraud--because he has been held culpable by juries of those offenses and his convictions are relevant to his fitness for office, as David noted.
OK, time for me to go back to doting on my cats before I start sounding "brittle."
Here's a Wednesday morning rabbit hole if anyone is interested in going down it: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/steelmagnificat/2024/07/something-you-ought-to-know-about-hallow/
DeleteThe first part of the post is about the prayer app Hallow. (which I'm not really interested in). I am more interested in its connection to billionaire Peter Thiel, who is JD Vance's former boss, and a major financial sponsor for his political advancement.
"...going forward, she could do the nation a service by keeping her campaign focused on and broadening the range of issues she talks about." Jean, I totally agree with that!
DeleteReading the Wikipedia article and other stuff on Thiel, he seems to be a great big ball of cognitive dissonance to the point of being nuts. He's a libertarian but he supports Vance who is into, I wouldn't call it anti-abortion, womb control. He wants AI to be developed for positive things but his company's AI software is supposedly being used to target Palestinians. His firm is also developing software for crime prediction, which reminds me of Minority Report. He's definitely a transhumanist. At bottom, he thinks he's smarter than everyone else and knows what is good for us all, who are characters in his huge Sci-Fi technofix scenario. The one thing Thiel and Vance have in common. No human moral core. That'll do.
DeleteI think you're right he's kinda nuts. It seems like "nuts" is a streak running through transhumanism. LOL, I wonder if he can see his face in a mirror, and if anyone has ever seen him after the sun comes up.
Delete"It seems to me that if something is both true and relevant, it is not a "personal attack.""
DeleteAll these words - "perpetrator", "fraudster", "thin-skinned", "brittle" - are about the person, not a particular issue. Trump is a "perpetrator" (at least in the sense of having been convicted of a crime) for allegedly cutting some financial corners related to paying off Stormy Daniels. That has nothing to do with immigration, or inflation, or Gaza, or abortion, or other national issues.
Both sides are already claiming the other side's candidate is unfit to be president. Biden has been pushed aside because there seems to be a general consensus that he is unfit to be president. (Or, given the current situation, he is still be fit to be president until January, but after that he won't be fit anymore.) One's fitness to serve as president is a set of personal characteristics, regardless of the issues. It's all very personal.
There is concrete evidence that Trump committed crimes. There is no concrete evidence that Harris is thin-skinned or brittle, which are not crimes but subjective characterizations.
DeleteCriminal behavior affects how one might make decisions about national issues, i.e., for the greater good or to gain personal favor with rich investors or foreign trading partners.
I see nothing weird about Biden deciding that he has the stamina to be prez, but not to go on the stump at the same time. Many of us make that decision at retirement age. When I went on chemo, I could not teach a full load, and I cut back to part time.
Yeah, I don't see anything weird about it either. Reagan, Clinton, George W Bush, and Obama all had their "lame duck" period. They had all served two terms. George H.W. Bush only had one, since Clinton beat him in the election. But he continued to serve as president until Clinton took office.
DeleteAs a person of retirement age, I know that I am still up for some things, but not others. And not everything at once. In this calendar year, Biden has made a good state of the union address, and made journeys to Israel and Ukraine, and France, and addressed NATO. He has represented US interests, and helped to avoid a government shutdown. I think we are fine with him staying on until Jan 20, 2025, regardless of who wins the election.
Jean, I don’t think there are any politicians - Dem or GOP who aren’t extremely wealthy .At last not at the national level. Congress is a millionaires’ club. They are ALL limousine liberals .
DeleteI guess I see limousine liberalism as an attitude more than anything. There are a lot of well-heeled Dems who pretend to care about social programs. They'll throw money at them without thinking and then go on to worry about the problems of nice college educated women, people of color, and gays.
DeleteAnd there are Dems like Bernie who look at social programs and the larger issues that make them necessary and try to address root causes and reduce overhead costs.
Republicans don't want to give anybody anything, and they jack up the cost of the programs with their little requirements to ferret out who's not "deserving."
In my experience as a "welfare recipient," I'd say the bureaucratic burden is designed mostly to make you frustrated and feel like a failure than to catch cheaters. But my guess is that Republicans are happy with just making people feel bad.
Katherine - I don't think a president like Obama or either Bush finishing out his term of office as a lame duck is a completely apt comparison to Biden's situation. Even LBJ, who got out of the re-election race because he thought he couldn't win, is not quite the same.
DeleteBiden's situation is more like that of Pope Benedict, who retired as pope because he thought he lacked the stamina to do the job. Of course, that comparison is not perfect, either: Biden hasn't retired (yet) from the presidency; and Benedict didn't have to run for re-election.
Biden might be also be compared to Ronald Reagan and Woodrow Wilson, both of whom were incapacitated to the point of not being able to function in the office. We think Biden is not that badly off, although the lack of transparency in recent weeks makes it hard for us to judge with any certainty.
Jim, if inability to do the job even with good advisors is the reason to leave early, then John Paul II should have stepped down years before he died. I imagine that was a factor in Benedict’s decision. He didn’t want to be a doddering old man who waves from a window while being held up to sit straight by people who were not visible from the square below. Quit while he was ahead. Plus he probably really was tired and didn’t want the stress for the rest of his life. He wasn’t suited to the papacy. He was an introverted academic at heart, with even less understanding of the lives of real people than most clerics, and his life was better if he could simply think great thoughts, write, pray, and enjoy his music and his cats. But he should have done that in Germany, not Rome because I believe that his presence in Rome made the strain on Francis worse than it should have been.
DeleteBiden isn’t looking at a possible multi- year term, but just a few months. Based on Biden’s recent public appearances, it seems that he, with the support of Jill and his top staff, should be able to continue until Jan 20. Just my opinion.
I might add, that since he won’t be spending so much time campaigning, which is exhausting, his energy for actual governing might be better. His thinking will be better without the physical exhaustion and the emotional stress. So I favor letting him finish his term unless something truly dramatic happens. My experience with several friends and family with Alzheimer’s is that it progresses fairly slowly and they could be quite normal in the earlier stages, but with lapses into confusion. Frankly, Trump seems almost incapable of coherent thinking but nobody is making a big issue out of it.
DeleteGeriatric doctor offers geriatric assessment of Biden.
Deletehttps://www.caringfortheages.com/article/S1526-4114(23)00188-9/fulltext
He suggests requiring cognitive function tests for lawmakers, to be made public, past a certain age, say 80.
On our local NPR stations, I'm hearing a lot about aging Boomers (tho Joe is a couple years older than the Boomers) having difficulty letting go of the power and cultural/social influence they have always had. I certainly see some of that in Biden's earlier insistence that only he could beat Trump. Trump is a frantic Boomer clutching at power in a way that would be pathetic if he weren't so dangerous.
Most young people want us gone--we're eating too many resources, we don't understand tech and we fear it, and we think we know everything. And, for good or ill, our time is passing away.
Biden is doing what all of us elders should: Offer whatever wisdom and encouragement we can and get out of the way.
Well some Boomers have a hard time letting go of power. That would have to mean they had to have it in the first place. Most of us didn't. We just had jobs. We're just grateful for Social Security and Medicare, and are quite glad to leave the rat race to the next generations. Hopefully I don't think our children want us out of the way
Delete"Jim, if inability to do the job even with good advisors is the reason to leave early, then John Paul II should have stepped down years before he died. "
DeleteYes, I agree, at least that he should have stepped down. I am not certain he had good advisors during that last decade or so of his papacy!
LOL, it was said that in Pius XII's last years it was the nun who was his housekeeper who was really running things.
DeleteKatherine I had not heard that before re: Pius XII's housekeeper. Those years are considered the pinnacle of Catholicism, especially by conservative Ameticans who think Vatican II ruined everything.
DeleteToday's Democracy Now just had a segment with two peace activists working together to seek a ceasefire and reconciliation in the present chaos. Palestinian Aziz Abu Sarah lost his brother years ago who died from internal injuries following being tortured by Israelis to obtain a confession. Maoz Inon is an Israeli who lost both his parents in the Hamas attack. The segment began with a picture of the two men meeting with Pope Francis. They have put aside anger to seek peace which they think is possible. They don't believe anyone can kill their way to peace. Christians need to support these holy seeds of a peaceful future, not succumb to the demonic temptation of revenge and intense violence.
ReplyDeleteThanks for pointing out that article, Stanley. The Pope's meeting them in Verona was apparently not well known; it took place in May. I hadn't read about it before. I found one article about the pope's trip to Verona: https://www.ncregister.com/cna/pope-francis-pastoral-visit-to-verona-emphasizes-call-to-be-peacemakers
DeleteYou are right about the demonic temptation of revenge and intense violence.