Member-only story
I watched the debate with I think the appropriate level of existential dread (see my article The Fabulist vs the Feeblest) and I then thought, watching the ensuing commentary that Biden had to drop out.
Then I saw a Trump interview gloating about knocking Biden out of the race. And that was a new datapoint to consider.
You definitely don’t want to give Trump an opportunity to brag like that, and you don’t want to do (generally in tactics) what your opponent wants you to do.
But sometimes you are in a fork (see chess tactics) where there is no good outcome, only one where you loose different material and board control. So we are in the position of being in a race where the Democratic candidate (and presidential incumbent) doesn’t have the energy and mental sharpness for a debate against a known liar and insurrectionist, or we accept the loss that comes with admitting we can’t beat Trump with the candidate we have and pick a new one. There is no good outcome here, just a preferred one.
I think, we should take the opportunity to make Bernie the nominee. Let’s try uniting around the leftist candidate instead of the centrist one for a change. It hasn’t been done since FDR. And then I can watch Obama and Biden go from saying Trump is an existentialist threat to democracy to actually endorsing him so their donor friends won’t have their taxes raised. Won’t that be fun?
