Posted on 10/21/2024 5:51:04 PM PDT by TigerClaws
With the Nov. 5 election just over a fortnight away, here is an intriguing thought experiment.
By most accounts, the election is still a horse race too close to call. But although Vice President Kamala Harris quickly assumed the presidential mantle from Joe Biden and put in place an impressive start-up, October has not been particularly kind to her. Donald Trump has closed the electoral gaps, and some believe he is actually leading.
No matter who wins, we have to ask: Would President Biden have been a better candidate and choice despite suffering from the effects of age and 81 years? Further, suppose that the disastrous June 27 debate with Trump had not taken place, or that Biden had been firing on all cylinders that night. Would Biden have been forced to withdraw? And whether Harris loses or wins, some will ask whether Biden might still have been a better candidate.
Bob Woodward’s new book, “War,” might not be dispositive in representing Biden’s strengths and weaknesses. The book does add weight to this thought experiment, though. Woodward paints a very positive picture of Biden’s ability to lead and to govern despite making mistakes, most notably the disastrous withdrawal from Kabul.
Woodward also reports that Biden’s obvious decline was physical and not mental. This was caused in part by prior medical conditions accelerating the effects of age on a body. There were also the strains of high office; the president refused to limit his overworked schedule despite valid criticisms that he was on near-permanent holiday in Delaware or Camp David.
Kamala Harris’s role as Woodward describes events was not as significant as Biden’s national security team, who were his band of brothers and sisters. And Woodward did not focus on domestic politics.
Today’s politics remain visual, whether on television or social media with a constant flow of posts that millions of subscribers download every day. In fairness, Trump is an entertainer, showman and salesman. He may be overweight and wear excessively long ties while obsessing about his finely coiffed hair, but he gets away with it. And Trump, like the Energizer Bunny, seems to have unlimited endurance.
The physical comparison between the two presidents could not be more striking. That must favor Trump and in a small way accounts for some of his widespread public support. He is also interesting — love him or hate him, Trump is far from boring. The size of his audiences at rallies confirms that.
Harris is a generation removed from both presidents. As President Vladimir Putin slyly observes, she has a “contagious” laugh and a very buoyant and positive attitude. That is refreshing and a counterpoint to Trump’s bleak and dystopian view of the world.
If Biden were still the candidate, he would have to overcome these physical and visual disparities with Trump. To do that, Biden would have to mount an aggressive campaign to portray Trump as a convicted felon, unfit for public office. For some reason, the Harris campaign has downplayed this conviction and his three other pending cases, as well as Trump’s major character flaws.
The public may have decided, as senior Democrats have, that Biden is too old to serve. Had he been re-elected, Biden would have been 86 at the end of his second term. Given his age, it is not impossible that Biden could suffer a major health event.
Trump is only three years younger than Biden. He is certainly not immune to the vagaries of health, as his vice presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) understands.
But Biden is not running. And with the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, Biden now has an opportunity to help conclude a peace agreement in the Middle East. That would be Biden’s legacy. One hopes he will pursue that opportunity.
As I have previously written, Americans may not know the winner right away, given the likelihood of contested districts and recounts. Yet, when the 47th president is decided, at some stage, people may wonder whether the best choice was not Harris or Trump.
In retrospect, perhaps America would have been better served if the 46th president Joe Biden won a second term.
But posted as even the leftist media is turning on Kamala now.
Biden’s numbers were cratering after the debate. Keeping him would have done nothing to ramp up the female base. That said, they can obtain 100 million ballots for just about anyone who runs for the DEM ticket. Even Harris/Walz.
Joe had become such an embarrassing ‘Family Secret’ for Americans. The Dems were desperate to remove him as the approved Hood Ornament for our country.
The big mistake, was settling for someone like Kammy as a substitute. An empty headed, unable to read the room-moral free Socialist woman in a loose Mao-esque tailored suit.
IOW; Out of skillet, into frying pan.
It means that the left will lose and, when male black voters break (relatively speaking) for Trump, they'll turn on Zero as they did on Nader after the 2000 attempted election hijack by the Demagogic Party led by Al Jazeera Gore.
That’s danger zone on the crazy/hot matrix.
Physical decline doesn't have mental effects? Dream on, idiots.
LOL LOL between this and Mark Cuban saying that he would be love to serve in the Trump Administration if asked they know the writing is on the wall
It does make you wonder after they “succeeded” last time by simply hiding him. They could have hid him this time. Or Kamala too, for that matter.
Secondly, Biden actually ran the gauntlet, and got elected. Harris never did. She didn't even have to face real competition in her state-wide races.
I may loathe it, but Biden has a certain schtick that has got him elected in Delaware for decades, and was able to get him close enough to being president. And we can see Harris does not have that.
I’m seeing a lot of postmortems of the election we are going to have two weeks from now. It feels good.
I think the reason they didn’t hide Harris is that it wouldn’t be an issue, no matter how bad she looked. And she’s been brutally awful, starting with her selection of Walz.
POTATUS...
PUTATUS...
SSDD.
I don’t agree with the “anointer” narrative. If the primary is over, then the VP is the nominee. You don’t get to do a do-over because you don’t like the person. If the presidential candidate bows out, then the VP is the person. The only anointing was when Biden picked her. Just the same as every other president/candidate has done.
The choice between Harris and Biden is like the choice between a douchbag and a colostomy bag.
Instead of getting Joe to step aside as the ‘candidate’, they should’ve got him to step aside as the President... Then she may have had a chance to actually ‘look’ Presidential... But they didn’t... Which means the Democrats didn’t think she was ready to be President... So why would anybody else think that she’s ‘ready’?
Instead of making her the President, they left Mr. Potato head in charge... A man who’s morning drool last all day long. This country is currently being run by his wife and his criminal son... That is why the Democrats will be decimated on November 5th... Because of that dereliction of duty, they don’t deserve to be in charge of America.
Biden is not out because of his mental or physical decline. He’s out because he is a crap President who has lit the economy on fire with energy, inflation, housing, interest rates, immigration, etc. And he was guaranteed going to lose.
He was going to lose to Trump, so they staged a coups to remove him.
The acuity issues, while real, were only a convenient excuse to remove a terrible president.
If it were only cognitive or physical skills, Kamala would loudly and proudly announce the continuation of everything he’s done. He’d be with her on the trail.
Instead she distances herself from him. That tells you what you need to know. Harris and Biden both suck.
Biden may get the last laugh.
It would be amusing if several hundred thousand fraudulent ballots made it into the mix with his name marked on them!
Puddin brains or shaky puddin?
They used covid as an excuse to hide him last time, without that people notice when a candidate is hiding.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.