Thoughts on the debate: ‘It’s going to be a bumpy ride.’

There is no telling where events will have tak­en us by the time you read this.  Politics is in a state of flux right now that no one could have fore­seen, even a few short weeks ago.

There are, how­ev­er, some com­ments that deserve say­ing fol­low­ing the debate between Donald Trump and President Joe Biden.

• To char­ac­ter­ize the June 28 fias­co as a “debate” would undoubt­ed­ly evoke uproar­i­ous laugh­ter from any high school stu­dent involved in debate.
• The two par­tic­i­pants can be accu­rate­ly described as ”debil­i­tat­ed” and “deranged”, nei­ther being a good choice for president.
• President Biden’s per­for­mance was not a “one-off”.  A cold and a 12-day-old jet lag can­not account for his hes­i­ta­tions, lack of clar­i­ty, stam­mer­ing and fail­ure to respond ade­quate­ly to his opponent’s often out­ra­geous claims and assertions.
• Two con­tenders for the Presidency, one aged 81 and one aged 78, are both too old to be seek­ing the office. 
• It was sug­gest­ed that Mr. Trump aver­aged one lie every three min­utes.  Typical for him but it’s also like­ly that he grouped a good many of them togeth­er with­in a sin­gle sen­tence or with­in his allot­ted two-minute sessions.
• The President’s sub­se­quent inter­view with George Stephanopoulos did noth­ing to assuage the con­cern for his men­tal acu­ity. He was again hes­i­tant with his answers, non-respon­sive on occa­sion, and any­one who sug­gests that only “God almighty” could con­vince him to quit the race deserves scrutiny.
• Biden’s refusal to step aside at this point is noth­ing but hubris.  If he tru­ly feels that a threat to democ­ra­cy exists with a poten­tial sec­ond term for Trump, he should come to grips with his debil­i­ties and vol­un­tar­i­ly step aside.  His fam­i­ly and con­fi­dants, who are either sup­port­ing him or sim­ply acced­ing to his desire to stay in the race, are doing noth­ing for the secu­ri­ty of this coun­try.  If he con­tin­ues to dete­ri­o­rate at the same rate as dur­ing the last few months, a sec­ond term as President would either be dis­as­trous or guid­ed by unknown adher­ents.  This hap­pened once before when Wilson suf­fered a stroke and his duties were per­formed for a peri­od of time by his wife, all with­out offi­cial sanc­tion, of course.
• Republicans appear to be con­tent to have Biden con­tin­ue his quest for a sec­ond term and polls sug­gest that the President is con­sis­tent­ly los­ing ground in the race.  A sec­ond “debate” – if the sched­uled one takes place – would like­ly con­firm Biden’s difficulties.
• Democrats should hope that a sec­ond debate will be can­celled; Republicans are wring­ing their hands in glee at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the sec­ond one with Biden.
• Much spec­u­la­tion abounds regard­ing who could rea­son­ably replace Biden if he choos­es to remove him­self from the race and much of that spec­u­la­tion cen­ters around the cur­rent Vice President, Kamala Harris. One thing is sure. If she were to move into the posi­tion as a can­di­date, she would wipe the floor with Trump in any debate.
• The Biden team and sup­port­ers’ asser­tions that he has been select­ed to run by the American peo­ple is a non-sequitur.  The only rea­son this has tran­spired is that Biden was the only Democrat on the pri­ma­ry bal­lot in most states.  Now it appears that near­ly three-quar­ters of Democrat vot­ers believe he should step down.
• If Trump were to be elect­ed to a sec­ond term, it would be only the sec­ond time in his­to­ry that a President served two non-con­sec­u­tive terms (Grover Cleveland).
• No mat­ter what hap­pens in the next few weeks, there is like­ly to be tur­moil at the Democratic con­ven­tion.  Biden has sug­gest­ed that, if some­one wish­es to chal­lenge him for the nom­i­na­tion at the con­ven­tion, they should do so.  Agreed.  If he does not remove him­self, that would be the demo­c­ra­t­ic way to move forward.

In the final analy­sis, I believe that a sec­ond term for either of the present con­tenders will not work well for America.  But most espe­cial­ly, I quake at the thought of a sec­ond Trump term, based on Project 2025, the GOP Party Platform, and the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the President from 2025 to 2029 may have two or three Supreme Court appoint­ments — and Trump should def­i­nite­ly not have that power.

To para­phrase Bette Davis, “It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”