By accepting the figurative gold watch of retirement and dropping his reelection bid Sunday, President Joe Biden gave his Democratic Party a powerful chance in November’s election to not only sweep government leadership at the federal level but also to win big in local races around the 50 states.
Such a wave could be led by his obvious replacement, Vice President Kamala Harris, who might become both the first female chief executive and the second person of color to win the White House.
Against former Republican President Donald Trump, the former prosecutor Harris would oppose a convicted felon and a bellicose bully who is a proud, racist, sexist, white man with issues of impulse control and ego.
And who might vote for the 59-year-old Harris instead of the large, loud, orange-faced, yellow-haired, 78-year-old demagogue?
- Women still chagrined by the war on reproductive freedom led by Trump and his hand-picked religious fundamentalists who have tilted the Supreme Court to radical extremes;
- African-Americans whose faith in Biden and the Democratic Party has wobbled or faded;
- Young people shaken and awakened by foreign wars, high rents, tuition bills, and the racial reckoning of this decade;
- Persons of Hispanic or Arabic descent who may be alarmed when they learn of Trump’s racist plan for mass deportations that will destroy families;
- Advocates of gun-safety laws that might have prevented the attack on Trump two Saturdays ago by a registered Republican with a legally purchased assault rifle.
Biden’s announcement Sunday eclipsed both that assassination attempt and the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last week.
The Trump nomination festival became a scripted reality-show spectacle that seemed to leave Trump with four finalists for his running mate pick: the pro wrestler Hulk Hogan, the right-wing noisemaker Kid Rock, the propagandist Tucker Carlson, and Almighty God.
He needed someone strong to replace Mike Pence, Trump’s former vice president who dumped Trump after Trump sent a lynch mob to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to murder Pence for not obeying Trump’s demand that Pence violate the Constitution in a coup.
Trump now knows how Pence felt when Secret Service agents whisked him away that deadly day. Trump himself was hustled off-stage earlier this month after sustaining a bloody wound to his right ear from a would-be assassin in Pennsylvania.
“In a way, I felt very safe,” Trump told the convention, “because I had God on my side.”
Many other Republican speakers (and right-wing media) assured the convention and TV viewers that, yes, indeed, the Supreme Being miraculously saved Trump for a special purpose. Not that Trump didn’t see the bigger picture.
“Last week,” he said Saturday night in Grand Rapids, “I took a bullet for democracy.”
In that God is non-partisan, however, Trump’s running mate instead will be J.D. Vance, an opportunistic chameleon who shape-shifts through name-changes, points of view, and his very identity. He’s many things to many people.
So youthful at just age 39, Vance just figured out what he wants to be when he grows up: President.
He brings quite a resume. Vance is an ex-Marine who went to Yale Law School; he’s a convert to Catholicism; he’s a Silicon Valley entrepreneur; he’s the intellectual author of Hillbilly Elegy who once was so-very-critical of the “reprehensible” Trump.
He called Trump an “idiot” and even compared Trump to Hitler and heroin. In the past, due to family turmoil in his youth, Vance has gone by names like “James Hamer” and “James Donald Bowman” and “James David Vance.”
Now, he hopes to try “Vice President” on for size. Vance is quick to pivot because he is shrewd, calculating, and clever. Once Vance sniffed Trump’s demagogic appeal, he dropped his enlightened conservative pretensions the way a snake sheds its skin.
Many of us have known guys like Vance: Young and ambitious people who pretend to line up on one side but change their minds when the wind shifts direction. They flourished in the Reagan era. Vance perceived a short line among young, electable “conservatives” willing to pledge blind fealty to Trump.
As a result, he could play an inside straight into the White House should Trump win again. But now, the Ohio senator may have to first endure a veep debate with a Harris running mate not yet named. It would be good to see Vance challenged on his anti-women ideas like forcing rape victims to bear babies.
Trump and Vance appeared together Saturday evening in Grand Rapids, their first rally after the convention, a scene that emphasized the pivotal importance of Michigan among at least a half-dozen swing states.
Trump won Michigan over Hillary Clinton in 2016; Biden beat Trump here in 2020. On Saturday, Trump spoke for nearly two hours, rambling and veering from topic to topic, weaving like a reckless driver from lane to lane. He warned that the American auto industry is doomed and that World War III looms.
He kept calling Biden “stupid;” he claimed to know nothing about Project 2025 of the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing plot to cripple government designed by Trump’s allies and friends. In two of his increasingly bizarre digressions, Trump again mentioned Hannibal Lecter and Al Capone.
He continuously mispronounced the first name of Harris as “Kah-MAH-la” instead of “KAH-mah-la;” he kept repeating his xenophobic rants that “illegal immigrants” bring crime, insanity, and Democratic votes to the United States.
“Immigrants are invading our nation,” Trump said in Grand Rapids, “to steal our jobs and murder our daughters.” But Trump avoided topics such as abortion, gun “rights,” and the Supreme Court, issues he used to campaign on in his 2016 victory and 2020 defeat.
Biden’s historic step-down Sunday was not like those of President Richard Nixon in 1974 and President Lyndon Johnson in 1968. Nixon’s crimes drove him to resign in disgrace; Johnson’s decision in 1968 was to finish his term but not run again as he conducted an unpopular war in Vietnam.
In Biden’s case, Democrats will applaud him, admire him, and venerate him at their coming convention, which is also a great stage for Harris. She could speak of how Trump packed the Supreme Court with reactionary judges who repealed Roe v. Wade and abolished a woman’s right to choose.
Harris could promise to appoint progressive judges, institute term limits for justices, expand the high court to at least 13 seats, and press for a return to abortion rights in all states.
As for guns, Harris would point out that Trump wouldn’t dare say anything against “Second Amendment rights” even after he was nearly killed by a high-powered assault weapon of war now common among civilians and protected by Republican gun groomers during an era of gun massacres.
And with his plan to deport millions of people of color, Trump is vulnerable among Arab and Hispanic voting blocs not only in Michigan but also across the country. As Trump has taught us, nothing whips up the base like fear and anger. If Trump and Harris debate, can he restrain his sexism and racism?
But, first things first. The drama now moves into a new act. Who should be Harris’s running mate? How should Democrats script their convention? As Trump and his chanting cult might put it, it’s time to “Fight! Fight! Fight!” to dump “Trump! Trump! Trump!”
