I’m Excited! And you should be Too!

Finally, the Veil has been Pierced and we can really Mobilize!

Joe Biden completely blew the debate with Donald Trump. There’s no other way to interpret what we all saw last night. None but the most blind partisans can possibly spin that weak, incoherent performance into a serious argument that Joe Biden made the case to The People, in person, that he should be re-elected president.

As John Ganz put it this morning on his Substack, Unpopular Front:

So, we’ve got one party that is willing to take any risk and hazard the country for the ambitions of a criminal and you have another one that has brought us into peril because they can’t break with the past and take any bold move. It seems that all the “norms” we were told to cling to are collapsing from dry-rot.

This, and so much more commentary and reaction from the grassroots on up to the highest echelons of our plutocratic elites, brings us to a perilous but pluripotent moment:

We finally have the opportunity for the very urgent, vibrant PUBLIC debate we need about the extreme dangers we face as a country and as a people and what it will take to move forward as a nation committed to “Liberty, Equality, and Justice for All.”

Thanks to Joe Biden and the blinders that led his team to put him into last night’s illuminatingly disastrous format, only a few minutes into Biden’s remarks, the real debate we must have as a nation was finally ignited. People are beginning to understand. And no amount of partisan “spinning” can stop this fire from spreading.

So, I’m extremely excited! And you should be too!

When Trump was elected and managed to galvanize widespread “middle-American” disaffection into a wildly enthusiastic and bellicose social and political force, much of the rest of us went into a kind of shock. The idea of Trump as president had been unthinkable. Trump’s victory was incomprehensible; just as, for many, was the fact of Hilary Clinton’s defeat.

We soon-enough regrouped and fought back successfully in 2018 and then again in 2020 and 2022.

That first victory felt like an overachievement when we won both Houses of Congress. The second one felt like a bit of a miracle when we won the presidency, held the House, and then squeezed out a victory in the Senate — in Georgia! But the 2022 election was disappointing as the House flipped to Republican control thereby tying Biden’s hands in many important ways for the remained of his term.

Joe Biden and the his Democratic Party elites, though, really saved the day in 2020! Biden was the best candidate to defeat an off-the-wall Republican incumbent. But, despite some pretty remarkable, if barely bi-partisan legislative achievements, both intra-Democratic-party non-alignment and Trump going totally rogue about a “stolen election,” overshadowed Biden’s accomplishments.

Our best candidate and team in 2020 was, by 2022, overmatched politically by the Republican Party’s complete embrace of Donald Trump and his MAGA anti-majoritarian militancy

Biden and his team were fine so long as everyone played politics by the rules and respected the umpires. But when Trump and allies took off the gloves, Biden and his team assumed a defensive crouch and have been taking a media and political beating ever since, especially on bread-and-butter issues, but also on perceptions of leadership and more recently reaction against Biden’s support of perceived Israeli excesses in the Gaza War. Arguably, The SCOTUS Dobbs decision, overturning Roe V. Wade has been the strongest pull for Biden’s favorabilities, such as the are.

But Biden and his team appear to have put all of their money on the bet that Trump’s bellicose crusade against the Constitution and the rule of law would run out of popular steam. Wrong! And that Biden could wait-out Trump’s flurry of fury and emerge as the front-runner in the 2024 presidential race. Wrong! With this confidence, the Biden team would give no quarter to even intimations that Biden was not up to this unruly contest and should step aside.

They were wrong.

Last night’s debate was very hard to watch precisely because Biden wasn’t up to it. He hadn’t had to face what and how Trump is since the 2020 election. And Trump went to town, making Biden look anything but presidential.

A Gift

But while this is a very serious setback, it is also a great gift.

This public thrashing means that a wildfire of public alarm and debate has been ignited. This alarm will and should spread quickly. It has the potential to drastically change the landscape. A simmering fire in the grassroots can be deprioritized and ignored — but not a wildfire. A wildfire like this brings extreme heat, fear, unpredictability, and destruction.

But it also brings things to light and carves a new landscape. It creates desperately needed new space for voices and ideas that have not been heard or adequately vetted. It creates the opportunity — the necessity — for coming together around a clear and present danger — especially with the accelerant of our abjectly corrupt and politicized Supreme Court. SCOTUS added more fuel to the fire once again today in its brazen attack on the administrative agencies that provide for much of the very possibility of a civil society. And this SCOTUS has only just begun to fight our rights. This and so much more militant right-wing and Christian Nationalist initiatives are rapidly accelerating this dire conflagration.

The veil has been pierced

Biden’s stunningly inept and sad debate performance has ignited a firestorm that’s been simmering for years in the grassroots of our nation. It has now jumped into a full-scale conflagration that can no longer be ignored or denied.

Instead of being lost in the shadows of a thicket of simmering shock, mourning, propaganda and pathetic, mind-numbing funding appeals, we now can see. The veil has been pierced. The real harm being done — and to come — is manifest and Biden alone can’t stop it.