Chapter Fourteen: The Most Important Question Facing the Nation
Chapter Fourteen: The Most Important Question Facing the Nation
Today, the Nation Sits on the Anxious Bench
Today the Nation sits on the anxious bench. That is, “a state of worry or anxiety caused by uncertainty.”1
Today is Tuesday, November 5, 2024. This should be a great day. On this day, we voters have the opportunity to determine who will have the honor of leading our great nation as President.
However, today is not a great day. It is a day filled with foreboding. And it is a day on which we have to confront a question never before asked in American history. Please keep this observation in mind. I will refer to it at the end of this post.
Donald J. Trump is, of course, the Republican candidate. Not much needs to be said of him at this point. Anyone with an interest in public life knows he has been the nation’s dominant political figure since 2015.
Franklin D. Roosevelt asked voters during the 1932 campaign to “judge me by the enemies I have made.”2 Trump also wants to be judged by the enemies he has made. In addition, he wants to be applauded for the norms, rules, and laws he has broken. His acolytes love him not in spite of his limitless transgressions but because of them. That unique inversion makes him difficult to attack. What would destroy any other candidate strengthens him.
This election is vital to Trump for at least two reasons. First, there are reports that he is $1.8 billion in debt.3 His financial problems will be over if he wins the election. Bezos, Musk, and their friends will vie for the opportunity to bribe him.
Second, Trump is in real legal jeopardy. If he is elected, his legal problems go away. If he loses, he may wind up in jail.
Trump is the issue in this campaign. Voters are either for him or against him. Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent, does not evoke such emotion.
Harris is probably doing as well as anyone could expect. She is not the natural politician that Clinton (Bill not Hillary) and Reagan were. She has made some mistakes, chief among them her tardiness in distancing herself from Biden.
That said, Harris was so effective in her debate against Trump on September 10 that he was afraid to debate her again. She has the weight of the world on her shoulders, and the fact of her survival in these circumstances is noteworthy.
Harris was put into this position by the irresponsibility of Joe Biden and his handlers. In 2020, Biden strongly implied that he planned on being a one-term President and a bridge to the next generation. He has been in failing cognitive health for months, if not years. Nevertheless, someone named Jim Messina referred to Democrats concerned with Biden’s feebleness as “f*cking bedwetters.”4 By now, his frailty is undeniable. Biden’s handlers managed to hide his fragile state until June 27. His catastrophic performance that day in his debate with Trump shattered the myth of his competence, as millions of people watched him crumble before a national television audience.
Many were shocked by his dreadful performance, but one person was not. Representative Dean Phillips (D-MN) was not surprised. “My first reaction after the debate was surprise that suddenly the country was aghast,” he said. “I didn’t see anything in that debate I hadn’t seen at least in parts the last couple years.”5 Phillips had the courage to run against Biden in the primaries. But the Democratic machine successfully froze him out. He is one of the few Democrats to emerge from the mess created by Biden and his handlers with his honor intact.
Biden ferociously held on to his obviously doomed candidacy for 25 days, 25 precious days that his successor, Vice President Harris, could have used for her campaign.6 She was given from July 21st to November 5th to defeat a vicious foe whose followers were utterly committed to his victory and already preparing to deny his defeat if he loses.
On Sunday, October 27, Trump held a rally in Madison Square Garden. One of the speakers was a “comedian” named Tony Hinchcliffe. This person referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.” That disgusting crack outraged hundreds of thousands of voters, especially in the vital swing state of Pennsylvania.
In the face of this insult, Biden felt it necessary to insert himself. On Tuesday, October 29, in a call to Voto Latino, he said “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”7 The following day, a headline read: “Harris urged unity in her closing argument. Biden’s ‘garbage’ line undercut that.”8
Biden has always been a gaffe machine, but the nation can no longer afford his incompetence. Tomorrow, Biden should resign so that Harris can become President.
We need a competent person to lead the nation during what may prove to be a turbulent month. Biden is, as all the world can see, not fit to continue in office. Here are his words about “garbage”: “And just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico ‘a floating island of garbage.’ Well, let me tell you something … I don’t know the Puerto Rican that I know… or Puerto Rico where I’m – in my home state of Delaware – they’re good, decent, honorable people. . . . The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters. . . .9 Has he lost the power of speech, or is this how he thinks? We should not be left to wonder. It is time for him to go.
In her first day in office, November 6, Harris should award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to a true heroine of our time, Liz Cheney.
At the beginning of this post, I wrote that today we must ask a question never before asked in our nation’s history. In the summer of 1864, Abraham Lincoln thought it likely he would lose his bid for re-election. The Civil War seemed to be at a stalemate. The cost in terms of blood was horrifying. In the words of the Secretary of the Navy, “The immense slaughter of our brave men chills and sickens us all.”10 Despite everything, there was no question that the quadrennial presidential election would take place in the autumn of 1864. How often do nations conduct elections in the middle of a civil war? Of course the United States did, and Lincoln was triumphant. The whole purpose of the war, as he said, was to prove that “popular government is not an absurdity”.11
But now we must ask a question most of us never thought we would have to ask. Will the quadrennial election for President take place in the next four-year period, in 2028? Trump has said he wants to be a dictator. He says “for one day,” but of course such a day will never end.12 He has said that if you vote in this election, you will not have to vote again.
Let me refer you to the first post in this series. A German Social Democrat said prior to the Nazi seizure of power: “Hitler wants to get into the government but never out.” Fantastic as it is to contemplate, that is where, I fear, we are today.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/anxious%20bench#:~:text=1,or%20anxiety%20caused%20by%20uncertainty
Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Campaign Address in Portland, Oregon on Public Utilities and Development of Hydro-Electric Power,” September 21, 1932.
“Trump is almost 2 billion in debt and the amount is growing,” https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/31/politics/video/trump-debt-growing-dan-alexander-ebof-digvid
Martin Pengelly, “Democrats worried over Biden chances are ‘bedwetters’, ex-Obama adviser says,” The Guardian, September 6, 2023.
Peter Baker, “For Dean Phillips, Biden’s Withdrawal Offers ‘Unfulfilling’ Vindication,” New York Times, July 23, 2024.
I arrive at 25 days by including both June 27th, 2024, and July 21st, 2024, in this count.
Sam Fossum and M.J. Lee, “Biden seeks to clean up ‘garbage’ comment about Trump supporters denigrating Latinos,” October 29, 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/29/politics/biden-trump-supporters-garbage/index.html
Tamara Keith, “Harris urged unity in her closing argument. Biden’s ‘garbage’ line undercut that,” NPR, October 30, 2024, https://www.npr.org/2024/10/30/nx-s1-5172187/joe-biden-garbage-trump-puerto-rico
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/29/politics/biden-trump-supporters-garbage/index.html
Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005) p. 627.
https://americanhistory.si.edu/documentsgallery/exhibitions/americas_new_birth_of_freedom_1.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQkrWL7YuGk