Reflections On Joe, and the Battle to Come....

I love Joe Biden.  Of all the potential candidates, he is the one with the experience to manage our complex country and heal our divisions.  The problem is that today’s Joe Biden is not up to the task.  He is a flawed candidate, not for his beliefs or intelligence, but for his failing capacity due to his age.  Some of us, as we age, are able to be incisive and sharp until we draw our last breath.  Some lose their edge; are not as articulate; are searching for words; are simply tired.  Joe is one of those people.

It is a shame, however we cannot dwell in sympathy when the future of our democracy is at stake.  Joe will not be able to stand up to Donald Trump in a debate.  He will seem disoriented when verbally fencing with Trump, and Trump will ridicule him.  He will call him old, feeble, tired, sleepy, incapable of dealing with complex issues, etc.  It is not in our best interests as a country to fight this upcoming electoral battle with that kind of handicap.

So who will it be?  At this point it is still too early to tell, but in my opinion it will be either of Harris, Warren or Butigeig.  We shall see…..

My other question for today is about who we are as Americans.  This has been a terrible week for obvious reasons…slaughter in El Paso and Dayton, ICE raids in Mississippi, Trump’s vacuous stare as he read a teleprompter with Stephen Miller’s words on it, trying to impart comfort and unity he just doesn't feel or believe in, and the rising fear amongst our immigrant population.  I am trying to remember a time in my life when I felt as desperate about the crumbling of our democracy. I can’t. 

Fear abounds in our country in a way that I don’t ever remember.  There have always been issues between blacks, whites and Latinos, but this sense of fear, especially among our children is new and ominous.  Our youth are afraid.  Afraid to go to school, afraid to be out in public, afraid that their parents will be taken from them.  This is not the America that I knew as a child. 

We must all look in the mirror and decide whether we have a responsibility to end the vitriol, to remove the Divider in Chief, and try to find a way to bring our countrymen back together.  Our decision point is coming….a  year from November.  We must all choose whether we have had enough of the drama and exhaustion, the division, the racism.  If we choose another 4 years of what we have been going through for the past 5 years, our America will be transformed into something our founders always feared the most—the loss of the American 'idea'--an entity that has forgotten what freedom and the rule of law means.  We will be a nation in a downward spiral without redemption.  We will be the modern day Roman Empire, and we and the rest of the world will suffer the consequences.