The score is 45-3, your team is the 3. It’s the middle of the fourth quarter, it’s sleeting, and you’re still there. You love your team. But no one loves them more than the cheerleaders. There they stand on the sidelines, smiling through the cold rain and certain defeat like it’s Spring Break and the team is minutes away from a championship, shouting unhelpfully but optimistically “Go Team!” and “You Can Do It!” God bless their hearts.
There’s a time and place for cheerleaders. That time, though, is not now, and the place is not the existential trough the Democratic Party has dug for itself and from which President Biden presented himself to voters last week. In fact, it’s cheerleading that got us here and cheerleading that will lose us not a game but a Republic. It’s long past time for smiling numbly through this political sleet storm and time for tough decisions including the most important one: Joe Biden must go. Not because he’s old. Because he’s going to lose.
The stakes of this election were already clear before the Supreme Court decision on July 1. But that corrupt, partisan court’s decision to grant effective absolute immunity to Donald Trump and his Project 2025 put the question of who should be his opponent in the most stark relief possible. Understand this: Trump v. United States is the worst and most dangerous decision in the history of the Supreme Court, a Court that decided in 1857 to send a slave back to his so-called owners. A nation of laws has at least a chance to some day rectify the shame of slavery. The Trump decision means we are no longer that nation.
In the hours since the Wreck At Georgia Tech, self-identifying Democratic Faithful have (a) pretended everything is OK like teeth-clenched cheerleaders on the wrong side of an embarrassing trouncing (b) exhorted likely Democratic voters to try harder (give more money) and (c) accused Progressives daring to tell the truth about the President of betrayal. This isn’t a surprise, and it’s not going to work.
Politics is about creating the world we wish for, but campaigns are conducted in the world in which we exist. In that world it’s political malpractice to ignore *everyone’s* immediate and visceral reaction to the President’s debate appearance and performance. Evidence of this is the current focus upon what the President did, how he looked and how he sounded. Lost in this is the previously obvious (now obscured) point that he was on stage for 90 minutes with a convicted felon spouting demonstrable and juvenile lies who has described out loud his plans to dismantle our democratic republic and was unable to effectively challenge him. We need someone who can and will. Desperately.
This is not a criticism of Joe Biden or a condemnation of the elderly. Frankly, we don’t have time for that now. He’s fit and nimble enough, physically and mentally, for his age. More fit and nimble than many Americans half his age. This also isn’t about your father or someone who’s capable of doing a job at an advanced age and, unfortunately, it isn’t even about whether Biden himself can do the job at his advanced age. The very real immediate and practical problem is that he does not appear to be able to. These appearances matter. Most people listening on the radio to the Nixon-Kennedy debate believed Nixon won. Those watching on TV, having watched a sweaty and shadowy Nixon, believed Kennedy did. Nixon’s performance was Jordan-esque compared to President Biden’s.
In ordinary times, this would be a different discussion. But the position the President occupies has regrettably become our last best chance, and it’s become obvious that it’s only wishful thinking that this burden should now be on his 81-year-old shoulders. This is about candor in the service of denying the presidency to a Fascist in the world that exists now. None of the following is a good enough reason to continue to support a candidate it must be assumed will not beat Donald Trump: Affection. Loyalty. Nostalgia. Logistics. All of that is just cheerleading. This isn’t a basketball game or a high school dance, and if we are compelled to “dance with the one who brung us” we’ll end up goose-stepping our way out of the gym.
Also, while this administration has reasons to brag, no doubt, this President was already a damaged candidate. His unwavering support of Israel and its genocidal strategy and tactics in Gaza has cost him substantial support among voters he would otherwise count on. A new candidate could be the Cease-Fire candidate rather than the Arm-Netanyahu candidate. A new candidate also avoids the real challenges faced by incumbent candidates now across the Western democratic political world.
It’s a feature of American politics that people proudly “vote for the man not the party.” This is not the time for that, either. To the extent Biden’s cheerleaders are wearing sweaters with his initials or logo on them, they need to exchange them for ones bearing the Constitution. It may be their last chance to wear them.
