Amazing. The Republicans held a two-hour debate on Wednesday and there was barely any mention of field-lapper Donald Trump’s multiple indictments and alleged crimes. And so Mr. 91 Felony Counts, who dodged the encounter, gets away without a scratch.
Surely, evidence of his egregious degree of corruption and criminality should have been fresh on the debaters’ and moderators’ minds. On Tuesday, a New York state judge ruled that Mr. Trump committed fraud for years as he built his real estate empire.
But nah – that was hardly even worth a footnote. There were some effective debate performances, notably by Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis and Chris Christie, who ridiculed Mr. Trump as “Donald Duck” for skipping it. But candidates mainly skewered one another instead of the guy with the 40 to 50 percentage-point lead.
They’ve seen that Mr. Trump’s standing only increases as the indictments pile up. In crazed GOP land, crime pays, corruption sells. So why bother?
Instead, it’s the mounting problems of Joe Biden that are resonating with voters. The President trails Mr. Trump in most recent polls. He’s hapless in the face of floods of migrants at the U.S.’s southern border. He’s at the mercy of brutally high gas prices. A scandal involving his son Hunter hangs over him.
House Republicans have launched far-fetched impeachment proceedings against him, led by Kevin McCarthy, the House speaker who looks like a zookeeper who has been cornered by his own hyenas. On top of that, the pack of hard-righters, demanding deep spending cuts by the White House, is forcing a potential shutdown of major government services. Mr. Biden spoke to the nation about the MAGA movement on Thursday, calling it “extremist.”
The President has cast his Democrats as the New Deal party, but they’re being derided as being only the new gender party. And the putdowns about his age – he’s so old, he gets winded playing bridge – keep coming.
Politics is the capacity to persuade, observes Mr. Biden in The Last Politician, an admiring new book on him by Franklin Foer that is worth a read. But his presidency, despite many successes in countering his list of failures, has failed to persuade Americans.
Most distressing for Mr. Biden is that even though fellow Democrats think he has done fine work, many still want him to leave the presidency after one term. And some think he might take the hint and signal by year’s end that he’s not running again. But there’s no sign that Joe wants to go. He’s campaigning hard, trying to demonstrate that he’s not crumbling physically and that his suspect mental equipment is still intact.
He joined striking auto workers on a picket line in Michigan this week – a first for a sitting president and a smart move for a politician who’s always viewed himself as working-class, drawing comparisons in Canadian quarters to Jean Chrétien.
Time’s running short. The deadline for candidates to enter the important early primary of Nevada is just two weeks away. Fourteen other states have filing deadlines before the end of the year.
Mr. Biden has been lucky so far, in that his only challengers have been a pair of wingnuts, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson. But Dean Phillips, 53, a three-term moderate congressman from Minnesota worth an estimated US$77-million from his years as a successful businessman, is a more mainstream Democrat who may jump in the race. Mr. Phillips, whose father was killed in Vietnam, is too unknown to make a big splash, but his entry could encourage others.
James Carville, the yappy long-time Democrat strategist, says the level of talent in the party “is as high as any political party has ever had in my lifetime.” He makes special note of Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, as well as governors such as Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, and Andy Beshear of Kentucky. “These are some staggeringly talented politicians. If they ever got out in the open and people saw them, holy moly.”
There is also California Governor Gavin Newsom and, from the 2020 battle for the nomination, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren. The Democrats do indeed have a strong bench, and it’s another reason why Joe should go. On account of age alone, some of them could be capable of taking him down in the primaries.
If no one comes forward and Mr. Biden waltzes through the primaries, though, it doesn’t mean it’s over. Democratic Party rules don’t forbid delegates from voting freely. For various reasons the party could sour on Mr. Biden after the primaries and nominate someone else at the convention.
The critical thing of course is to nominate a candidate who has the best chance of beating Mr. Trump. That candidate is not someone who, while having done good work, is increasingly viewed as a relic.
Lawrence Martin