I have gone back and forth on whether to write this piece. One day, I’d wake up and say to myself that Joe Biden is a good president, but since I first covered him in 1988, he has always been a lousy presidential candidate, and the Democrats must nominate someone younger who can better beat Trump. The next day, I’d wake up and say to myself, it’s too late—if Biden had declined to run at the beginning of the year, as I urged, things could have been different, but now it’s a fait accompli, and we need to suck it up and accept that he’s the nominee.
I finally decided that it’s only too late if we accept the lunacy of the endless American campaign season. In almost every other country, campaigns last 60-90 days. Why not here? The truth is, the last chance to get in the race is December 8th, the filing deadline for the first big primary in Michigan. While it would be terrible for the party and country for someone to challenge Biden in bloody primaries (this is historically harmful for the party of the incumbent), a statesmanlike withdrawal in the next few weeks would allow time for aspirants on the talented bench of the Democratic Party to jump in and create an exciting, energizing campaign about the future.
[The problem isn’t the “lunacy of the endless American campaign season,” it’s state deadlines for making the ballots for primaries and caucuses. But even more than that, it was the lunacy of the Democrats for putting a decrepit incompetent in this position in the first place. — Ed]
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