Of course, the Republicans will go into culture-war overdrive.
They will say that as a Californian, Kamala Harris is too #liberal.
They will say that as a former prosecutor, Harris is too #conservative.
They will say that she is too #female and too #Black.
(Well, they won’t say those last two out loud, but get ready for a fusillade of dog whistles that will be amped up to the point that they could shatter granite.)
Indeed, the MAGA Republicans are already griping about a Democratic Party “coup,” as if they have serious concerns about democracy in any political party, including their own.
But Biden’s decision reflected a determination to put the fate of his country ahead of his personal vanity,
a choice Trump is inherently incapable of making.
After today the difference between the Democrats and the Republicans could not be clearer.
Biden faces challenges of age that are not going to get any easier. His decision to make way for a younger candidate reaffirmed that his party is not about one man.
Trump, meanwhile, continues to bellow #gibberish at his rallies,
raving like the emotionally unstable, would-be #dictator that he is.
Even after Trump #insulted America’s #veterans and the nation’s war dead,
even after he was found liable for #sexual #abuse,
even after he racked up 34 #felony #convictions,
almost no elected officials in his party called for him to leave the ticket.
(As usual, Mitt Romney was seated at a table for one.)
Yet millions of Americans, sadly, have come to regard Trump’s pestilential character as merely a curious facet of an otherwise normal candidate.
Now that Biden is stepping down, all the false equivalency can end.
Biden is a good man, and he’s been a good and consequential president with a first-term record most of his predecessors would envy.
He is capable of serving out his term and should do so.
(The calls from Republicans today that he should now resign, coming from opportunistic hypocrites such as Elise Stefanik, are as meaningless as they are predictable.)
Trump was a disaster, an incompetent and ignorant president whose selfish decisions,
especially about COVID-19,
likely cost many thousands of Americans their lives.
Biden’s decision is now also a challenge to every voter in the pro-democracy coalition to live by their words.
For two years, many Americans lamented the choice between the aging Biden and the dissolute, unbalanced Trump.
Their wish has been granted:
They will now likely have a choice between
a #shouty, 78-year-old habitual #liar
whose life is a record of shame and failure
and a 59-year-old woman who has served #honorably as a big-state attorney general,
a #senator,
and the #vice #president of the United States.
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/07/a-candidate-not-a-cult-leader/679182/