Well, lets’ see, what to write about? I mean, has anything… Well, there’s this: Joe Biden has stepped aside as the Democratic nominee! Biden has been a very good President. If he was twenty years younger, nobody would have had anything to complain about. (Well, except MAGA. They make things up to complain about. They just like to complain.) Biden did the right thing for the country. He has created an opportunity for the Dems to win the election.

One of the reasons I like to write is that I can go back and see how often I’ve estimated correctly. It’s too easy for people to simply shift a position and decide that’s how they’ve always felt but when you write it down, you’re sort of committed to a given position, right or wrong. This one gets filed under ‘wrong.’ I really thought Joe was going to stay, for better or worse. Truth? My admiration for Joe just went up. A lot.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Joe. I’ve always liked Joe. He ran for President in 1988. I was thinking of voting for him, then, but he had to leave the race. He got caught up in a – and you can’t make this up – plagiarism scandal. Imagine that. He quoted a speech given by someone else without proper attribution – and had to stand down from the campaign! Standards, people!

Compare that to at least one of today’s candidates, the very old, cognitively impaired Donald Trump. Biden once had to stand down because of plagiarism. Trump is beloved by his base despite his crimes, failings, crimes, lies, crimes, outrageous claims, crimes, bullying, and crimes. Once, presidential candidates stood down over plagiarism. Now they can brag about groping women and issue openly racist diatribes and there are enough people who don’t care about any of it that they actually make excuses for him. “Ooh, he’s our guy!” Plagiarism, indeed.

Joe stepping down gave the left an immediate weapon against Trump: his age. Suddenly, the GOP is the party with the broken down old man suffering cognitive failures at it’s helm. The left pounced but the right does not, will not care. Equally as suddenly, the right simply decided that old and senile isn’t such a bad combination, after all. But the left will have fun doing to old, senile Trump what the right did to Biden, so…there’s that.

Biden kept insisting he was staying in the race. He would have, too, except for one key element. The Dems were perfectly prepared to totally ignore the desires of the rank and file. (When have they ever cared about the rank and file?) But when the money dried up? There was a pretty quick course change. I might have known. It’s always about the money in this submerging nation.
“Hey, Bob, millions of Democrats are distressed about Joe and feeling demoralized. They may not come out to vote. What are we going to do?”
“Say, Dan, why would we do anything? We’re the DNC! Joe Biden is our guy and they’ll vote for whoever we tell ’em to vote for, just like in 2016.”
“Um, we lost in 2016.”
“The point is, we didn’t let the voters push us around. WE call the shots. This is Joe Biden’s campaign to lose and we’re…”
“Yo, Bob, the big money donors are closing their wallets until Joe Biden is out.”
“Who? Joe who? No, name’s not familiar. Our candidate is Kamala Harris.”

Is Kamala the best choice? I don’t know. But she’s not the worst, of that I’m certain. She already has national name recognition. I think a lot of people will be excited to vote for her, in part because she’s a woman, in part because she’s a person of color (several colors, in her case). Mostly, because she’s younger (59 years) and more vigorous. She’s definitely in the ‘protect Roe’ mode. Most important of all? She’s not senile and there’s little risk of her becoming senile during the next four years. That, alone, gives her a huge edge over Trump.

I’ll ride with Kamala. I think she can do the job.

It’s funny. The first person I thought of after I’d heard the news was Gavin Newsom. Gavin has been running a shadow campaign. (He denies this.) He was all set to go in 2028. Now, with Kamala being pushed up, Gavin is being shut out until at least 2032, should she win. (If she loses, of course, we’ll be done with elections in this country. Trump will never leave.) That means Gavin wouldn’t get the nod until he’s 64. What does he do in the meantime to keep his name in people’s minds? Oh, well. That’s a different problem for a different day.

Meanwhile, Trump is in full attack mode. Of course, he’s still attacking Joe. After the announcement, Trump said Joe was a threat to democracy. (Trump, projecting.) Trump attacked Biden’s mental competence again. (Trump, projecting.) Tell you what, Donald, we won’t run Biden, how’s that?

I hear they DO have a plan to attack Kamala. They’re going to pick on the way she laughs. (That’s true.) They’re going to try to tie her to the border problem nobody has been able to solve (despite lying claims to the contrary) and which the GOP specifically sabotaged. They’re going to shift their blame for corporate greed from Biden to Harris – but it’s STILL just plain old, run-of-the-mill corporate greed.

It still doesn’t matter. Trump is still Trump, the same old (VERY OLD) criminal, sexual molesting, anti-American, democracy hating, lying, self-serving blowhard he’s always been. People STILL want a viable alternative to the same old (VERY OLD), same old and Kamala gives them that. Now, Americans can vote with confidence against very old, senile Trump. It’s a good thing. Thank you, Joe. The nation, along with the rest of the world, appreciates your sacrifice. You did the right thing – something Trump would never, ever do…