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After the January 6 attack on Congress, when the entire country saw (again) that Donald Trump was unfit for office, congressional Republicans opposed to him (and there were way more of those than it would seem) had a small window of opportunity to make sure that he would never be president again.
They blew it.
They could have voted to impeach and convict him, but, for political expediency, they falsely assumed that sparking an insurrection was something even Trump couldn’t come back from… and they were wrong.
The former president laid low for a bit and then emerged a few weeks later with an even tighter stranglehold on the GOP.
After last week’s debate, when the entire country saw that Joe Biden is unfit to serve another four-year term, Democrats opposed to his candidacy (and there are way more than it would seem) had a small window of opportunity to convince the president to find someone more capable of defeating Trump in November.
That window is now closing, and it looks as though they might blow it, too.
Instead of putting maximum pressure on him to get out of the race with dignity, most of them are waiting and hoping that Biden will do the right thing and step down on his own.
However, there are no indications that he will do so, and with every day the president dithers, instead of engaging in some careful self-reflection, and on which Democrats will do nothing, a second Trump term becomes more likely.
Sadly, it looks as though it will be a while until Biden realizes this. After all, men don’t think they are qualified to lead the most powerful country on the planet unless they have an outsized ego.
And that’s something people neglect to consider.
Yes, Biden is not like Trump in a thousand different ways.
But, when it comes to clinging to power, they now seem very similar.
On some level, Biden must know that, short of running a marathon and beating some UFC star in hand-to-hand combat, there is nothing he can do to dispel clearly legitimate concerns about his age.
And, now that the president’s frailty has become the story, it’s not going to go away.
Instead, new information will come out all the time that will cast doubt not only on his ability to lead the country in 2025 but also whether he can run it right now. And, if he cannot, there will be questions about who has known about this, and for how long… and who has been making the decisions.
That’s a narrative that not only harms Biden but also every Democrat running, and the longer this goes on, the worse it is going to get.
There is no shame in getting old… certainly not compared to staging a coup.
But that doesn’t change the fact that neither Biden nor Trump should be president.
Unfortunately, since voters are currently facing a binary choice between them, one of them will be… unless the Democrats act.
They are the only ones who can give Americans another option… but they can’t wait it out like Republicans did after the Trump insurrection.
They have to do something right now.
Everything Biden has said since his abysmal debate performance indicates that he plans to stay in the race, no matter how much damage he does to his country, his party, and his legacy.
It’s time for Democrats who want to win this fall to realize that they do not have the luxury of treating the president like a kind-yet-slightly-senile grandpa.
Instead, he is now a once-well-meaning political wrecking ball that is laying waste to his party’s chances of prevailing in November.
