Joe Biden Is Putting Himself before America

By Christian Schneider

Thursday, September 07, 2023

 

The leading candidate for one of America’s two major-party presidential nominations currently faces 91 felony counts as a result of four different criminal indictments. Donald Trump is effectively running for the nation’s highest office to prevent himself from becoming the holder of the nation’s lowest office — prison inmate.

 

Had the writers of a fantastical show like 24 been handed a script featuring this scenario, it would have been laughed out of the writing room as being too implausible. (And this is a show in which the American vice president, Charles Logan, plotted with terrorists to assassinate a former president.)

 

Surely the former president and once-again candidate, criminally charged in connection with his efforts to overturn the result of a popular election, culminating in a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol while the electoral votes were being counted, would be far behind the incumbent president in the subsequent election. No realistic script would insult the American voters by assuming the potential felon had a chance.

 

Welp.

 

According to a poll released by the Wall Street Journal over the weekend, incumbent president Joe Biden and the former president, who picks up felony counts at the same pace most Americans rack up McDonald’s reward points, are, if the election were held today, locked in a buck-naked tie at 46 percent apiece. When the poll included other, third-party candidates, Trump actually held a one-point lead over Biden.

 

That is because, while Donald Trump gets all the ink (deservedly) for being a terrible candidate, Joe Biden manages to be a wretched candidate without the benefit of a Bugsy Siegel–style rap sheet. The voters can see with their own eyes that Biden is a doddering old man, struggling to remember the nonsensical stories he makes up about his own life. What is worse — a politician who lies, or one who can’t even keep his falsehoods straight?

 

(For instance, Biden was often fond of saying he was arrested for trying to see Nelson Mandela in South Africa. Never happened. He later revised that story to say he was merely “stopped” at the airport — a claim a member of his traveling party denies. Soon, his story will be downgraded to “I remember watching the movie Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.)

 

This is the truth Democrats are unwilling to say out loud in mixed company: For all the talk of how historically bad Trump is, the reality is that he beat their candidate fair and square in 2016. So by the political transitive property, he must be only the second-most awful presidential candidate in modern times. He simply had the benefit of running against Hillary Clinton, who was even worse.

 

This time, Trump has the good luck of running against a cadaver escaped from a D.C.-area medical school. According to the Wall Street Journal poll, 73 percent of voters said they believe that Biden, who would be 82 years old at the time of his second inauguration, is too old to seek a second term. And that even included two-thirds of Democrats.

 

Most hilariously, a larger share of voters, by a margin of 10 percent, believe that Trump — the man who fires off daily social-media posts in the style of a methamphetamine-addled wolverine falling down a flight of stairs — is more “mentally up to the presidency” than Biden. Voters honestly believe that if left alone, Biden would go missing, only to be found in downtown Wilmington trying to call Winston Churchill using a discarded corncob.

 

Put more succinctly, there is only one thing keeping Donald Trump close to returning to the Oval Office in 2024, and that is the singular awfulness of Joe Biden, of whom only 39 percent of voters hold a favorable view.

 

So while it’s often said that Trump put himself before the country in trying to steal the 2020 election, and is justly reviled for it, what are we supposed to say about a barely ambulatory octogenarian whose continued presence makes Trump’s ascent to power all the more likely next year? If one believes the recent polls, supporting Biden means supporting Trump’s comeback.

 

Joe Biden isn’t to blame for the fact that Republicans can’t quit a candidate as thoroughly disgraceful as Donald Trump. Back in 2021, GOP senators could have shown courage and turned Trump into a political version of one of the “revenants” scientists have been digging up in Europe — sending him to his political grave and chaining him to the coffin to make sure his evil spirit didn’t escape and haunt us forever.

 

But the opposite has happened — according to the WSJ poll, 48 percent of Republican primary voters are actually more likely to vote for Trump given the four indictments against him. Those Trump fans are more likely to see their guy regain political power if Democrats insist on supporting such a weak incumbent.

 

Certainly no president wants to willingly give up the reins of the most powerful job on earth, as one-termers are generally deemed failures. But what will Biden’s legacy look like if he stays in the race, continues his cognitive decline, and hands the presidency back to a man who is running so he can then pardon himself of any federal felonies on his record? Because as the polls stand right now, that is entirely possible.

 

Like Trump in 2020, Biden is now putting himself before his country. If Democrats were allowed to start fresh and run someone who hadn’t completely botched the Afghanistan pullout, who hadn’t overseen an economy viewed negatively by most Americans, and who isn’t older than Velcro and with a much weaker grip, they would have a significantly better chance of retaining the presidency. But their desire to spare the feelings of a man who (in their eyes) heroically saved America from a second Trump administration in 2020 could very well hand Trump that second term in 2024.

 

There is the old story (often told by Ronald Reagan) about the two campers alone in the woods, discussing the possibility of outrunning a hungry bear. “I don’t have to run faster than the bear,” one camper said to the other. “I just need to outrun you.”

 

Assuming both candidates stay above ground in the next year, America faces a similar predicament. Trump may be a horrific candidate, but he only has to be one Electoral College vote less horrific than the guy he’s running against — the president who is barely there.