How I yearn for the days when people could politely disagree without engaging in name calling; when politicians could disagree with opponents without calling them childish names, accusing them of possessing dubious intelligence, maybe not even born in America.
And so hearing good old Joe Biden declare, “Let’s Make America America Again!”, I was surprised to find me almost yelling to myself, “Well, why indeed not?” I had initially felt Joe was ill advised to run. Too old, too ill-equipped with remembrances of past ‘goofs’ and too lacking the excitement of a Kamala Harris or Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren or Beto O’Rourke.
But as Frank Bruni commented in his NYT article, that is the essence of Joe’s strategy — “Elect me would mean the past four years were a bad dream.” Then I watched Joe handle a disruptive man attending a recent speech by gently welcoming him, suggesting they have a private conversation after his talk. How welcoming was that! No “Kick that man out!” Probably any of our candidates would be equally polite but seeing Joe in action filled me with a remembrance of times past I had feared might be gone. As Bruni concluded, any yesterday is better than Trump’s tomorrow. This was strangely reassuring to me, giving me confidence that any of our many candidates will help restore sanity to the electoral process.
Yet some of his challengers doubted that working successfully with the opposition was a good thing. To them it showed his willingness to work with Senate segregationists, a ‘no – no’. Joe mentioned that Teddy Kennedy had to learn how to work with segregationists to get any bills passed. As several reporters had predicted, other candidates soon began pointing out why each of them would be a better choice to defeat Trump.
The first debate of ten candidates will be held on June 26 and the second one on June 27. They promise to be lively. Will Joe still remain in the lead? I won’t miss them. How about you?