"Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.Woo, woo, woo."
Paul Simon, "Mrs. Robinson" 1968
Trump rivals are stepping up.
It is not too late for a Democrat to do the same.
People will misunderstand. Friends will criticize. It is OK. Joe Biden is so weak a feather will topple him. Democrats need someone to be the feather.
Today, or soon, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Ron DeSantis, Asa Hutchinson, Mike Pence, Chris Sununu, Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswami and maybe a few more will be official candidates for the GOP nomination. Don't count them out. At this point in 1975 few of us knew who Jimmy Carter was--not until he outperformed in Iowa. At this time in 1991 what we knew about Bill Clinton was that he was a smooth talker from a backwater state with a sex scandal problem.
It was not until June 15, 2015 that Donald Trump came down the escalator. Trump had a big reputation, but it didn't fit the situation -- not until he sold it by campaigning. He sold Republicans on a say-anything, do-anything shameless fighter, an insult comic. He was an alternative to a boring "TrusTED conservative" like Ted Cruz, or a sanctimonious prig like Rick Santorum, an over-practiced amateur like Little Marco, or establishment Low Energy Jeb Bush.
Robert F. Kennedy is polling at some 20%. There is a hunger for an alternative to Biden. I consider Kennedy a crank candidate, not unlike Marianne Williamson. Kennedy's anti-vaccine activism made him a public ally of Louis Farrakhan and Steve Bannon welcomes him into the race as a useful "chaos agent." I have heard Williamson multiple times. She offers uplift for self-actualizing individuals. Both are running because nature abhors a vacuum and they have no real credibility to lose.
Biden's team was too clever by half. They arranged to make South Carolina, not New Hampshire, the first primary state for Democrats. The DNC used the cover of saying it was to empower Black voters. Everyone knows the real reason. It protected Biden. Lock up the nomination with South Carolina Black voters before someone catches fire in New Hampshire and do to Biden what Eugene McCarthy did to LBJ in 1968 and what Pat Buchanan did to George H.W. Bush in 1992.
Sometimes campaigns click. Sometimes not. The campaigns give candidates a shot.
The South Carolina power play was a dis-service to Biden because the inevitable theme of the 2024 election will be that Democrats are hiding Biden's feebleness from the American people. And they are. Democrats are making the GOP talking point: Biden cannot win conflicts; he must avoid them. Biden needed to communicate bring-it-on confidence and can-do competence in a conflict. He is doing the opposite.
Biden has fringe-candidate opposition, but this leaves open the lane of spirited opposition from the far left. Possibly a Jill Stein/Nina Turner-style candidate will emerge with a message of defunding police, banning the sale of gasoline, reparation payments to Blacks, or confiscation of guns. Those ideas have appeal to a segment of left-oriented Americans, but they are not Biden's positions, and those positions are not broadly popular in a general election. A spirited and articulate campaign from the progressive left would give credence to the Republican critique that a weak, manipulated Biden will carry out their mission, not his. Biden has difficulty communicating his own mission. He is not a bad legislator. He is a poor communicator.
The solution is at hand. A nationally-electable, center left Democrat needs to step forward and articulate a case for the new generation of Democrats to continue the general policy direction of Biden. Democrats need a spokesman and hero. Grab the platform. Sell yourself. Where are you? Where have you gone?
Wow. The democrats refuse to support a president who has done so many good things since he was elected. We have Marianne Williams & I'm surprised that old Bernie & Jill Stein aren't throwing their hats in the ring for their usual splitting of the vote run for prez. Marianne doesn't have a chance & has become a joke, at best.