Election 2024: Image World (6b)

As I confessed in my previous post, when it came to a second Biden term I qualified as a Democrat in disarray. From one unpublished draft post to the next I dithered, articulating my oscillations but unwilling to commit to any of what I understood as the available options.

On the One Hand

Watching the decline of California Senator Dianne Feinstein a year or so ago, I wrote the following:

This is just sad. But also dangerous and costly to the very causes for which Feinstein has fought. We need some fitness tests for government service that address both mental and physical health.

I hesitate to put any age limit on service, having come around to accepting Biden’s candidacy for reelection as a necessity. But enabling Feinstein (and, before that, RBG) actually creates a counter-argument to Biden’s eligibility: See, this is what happens (or can happen) when someone past their prime hangs in there doggedly.

Never mind that, across the aisle, we have the demented Gosar, the decrepit Grassley, and numerous others overripe for retirement (and, in more than a few cases, the funny farm). How can the liberal-left anywhere in this country develop a deep bench to draw from if the Democratic Party’s elders refuse to recognize when it’s time to step down?

I speak as a 79-year-old male whose mother suffered from Alzheimer’s, and who watched her decline for a decade until she died. When her partner passed before she did, she declared that she was going to renew her driver’s license and travel around the country. At that point she had forgotten how to start a car, much less drive one, and couldn’t read a map.

If removing Feinstein is ugly, that’s because she’s made it so. We can’t afford this roadblock. It’s time for her to go.

Aging in Place

Yet I couldn’t bring myself to apply that reasoning to Biden. If I factored in not just what he’d accomplished so far during his presidency but his two terms as Obama’s veep and his prior three decades of service in the U.S. Senate, he’d proven himself arguably the most consequential and progressive president of my lifetime. Denying him a last hurrah just seemed … wrong.

Sentimental of me, surely. Perhaps I saw something of myself in him, neither of us ready or willing to bow out and retire. But these situations don’t bear comparison: Nothing of great import hinges on my decision to keep on writing and lecturing, which puts nothing in jeopardy (save, perhaps, my reputation), whereas democracy hangs in the balance in this election.

In any case, a year ago I wrote this:

Instead of trying to sidestep this issue of age, once the campaigns get into full swing I would think it wise to tackle it head-on. By emphasizing the fact that Biden remains in excellent health. By pointing out that his keen intelligence and skill at governance have never been more in evidence. By reminding everyone that, if our democracy survived an outright attempt at a violent insurrection, it can surely survive a transfer of power resulting from presidential incapacity as it has done several times in the past.

This requires assuring the citizenry that, should anything happen to Biden, Kamala Harris is ready, able, and willing to step into the breach, temporarily and, if necessary permanently. This, in turn, necessitates foregrounding her more and more in the administration’s day-to-day activities, enhancing her visibility and making it clear that she’s prepared to take over — during Biden’s second term if necessary, and after he leaves office if she’s elected.

Harris will turn 60 next year. If the Biden-Harris team wins in 2024, she will have eight years’ worth of a front-row seat in the Oval Office, studying the presidency as wielded by a master. She’ll be prepped and poised to stake out her own claim on it when Biden leaves. Given what the two of them have accomplished so far, and assuming that they keep this up throughout a second term, she will have both Biden’s legacy and her own on which to stand.

So, while rationalizing acceptance of Biden’s aging, I hedged my bet by preparing myself for his age forcing him to leave office. Can’t have it both ways.

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If I’d read myself carefully, I’d have heard the warning in those words. Clearly I hoped the issue would just go away, but Trump’s campaign, and the polls, and the media kept it active. I wanted to believe that simply served their sometimes nefarious purposes. So I felt particularly offended when, in early 2024, Jon Stewart — of all people — decided to use his welcome return to mainstream election commentary to tackle this question. Here’s what I wrote about that in my drafts:

To call the February 13 premiere edition of “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart back as host a disappointment drastically understates the matter.

Stewart has returned to the show — effectively by popular demand — to handle the 2024 election. Nothing wrong with that. He’s articulate, knowledgeable, witty, and entertaining.

That he would at some point address the age issue in re both Biden and Trump I considered a given. That he would do in bothsiderist fashion, painting Biden as particularly decrepit and fumbling, in his very first effort, I did not anticipate. Coming in tandem with the Robert Hur report, and drawing in part from that poisonous document, Stewart obviously did serious damage to Biden’s credibility as a viable candidate — and clearly intended that, whatever caveats he sprinkled in to cover his ass.

One visual segment struck me as especially problematic. At timestamp 16:13 of the monologue Stewart turns to the camera on his right, beckoning it to zoom in for a closeup — intended as a striking and memorable image. “Look at me,” he says wryly. “Look at what time hath wrought.” And then points out that “I’m 20 years younger than these motherfuckers.”

What’s wrong with this picture?

Let’s start with the fact that, at 61, Stewart actually looks good for his age, and would look even better (in my opinion), and definitely younger, if he abandoned the eccentric-grizzled-stumblebum-with-a-two-day-stubble look he has cultivated for some time and went clean-shaven. While not as extreme as the truly bizarre Mr. Natural chin-thicket that David Letterman has affected in recent years, this facial-hair choice visually ages Stewart at least a decade, arguably more. In short, Stewart, for reasons undisclosed, works hard at looking old.

Then add in the self-evident fact that, despite his gray hair, he clearly hasn’t lost a step since he left The Daily Show in 2015. Tonsorial style aside, he appears just as fit, focused, determined, and pugnacious now as he did a decade ago.

So he could have gone in a very different direction in his take on this situation. Instead of putting derogatory, ageist subtitles to the election segment’s “Indecision 2024” headline — “Electile Dysfunction,” “Antiques Roadshow,” and more — he could have said something to this effect:

Yes, I’m 61. And, like Joe Biden and Donald Trump, I’m not getting any younger. But I am also savvier and more skilled at my craft that I was when I was 51. I’m as fully capable of hosting this show today as I was a decade ago. Because, as the saying goes, I know my stuff. Just as Joe Biden, after decades of getting things done in Washington, knows his stuff. And just as Donald Trump, after decades of grifting and cheating across the U.S. and around the world, knows his stuff. This show’s viewers will determine whether my competence makes it a success. And the voters will determine whose “stuff” serves this country better — whose skill set and whose competence deserves a return to the Oval Office and the awesome responsibilities that come with it.

On the Other Hand(s) …

So sure, malign forces conspired to drive Biden out of office by capitalizing on his greatest vulnerability at a moment of heart-wrenching weakness. There’s a reckoning with them to come. Nonetheless, as Stewart had the unmitigated temerity to point out, the problem existed as a serious and potentially decisive one. It wasn’t just a right-wing fever dream. Which made it a nightmare for progressives.

Anyhow, that was four months before the debate. To his credit, Stewart managed to steer clear of any I-told-you-so (though certainly it lay implicit in his performance) during his brutal June 28 takedown of the debate itself, which he concluded by shouting “This cannot be real life! It just can’t! Fuck! We’re America!”

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Strange as it seems, right now Jon Stewart is arguably the closest equivalent we have to the late, beloved newsman Walter Cronkite — partisan, unlike Cronkite, but a widely trusted tv commentator ready and willing to speak truth to power, no holds barred. If Biden in his intermittent befuddlement had lost Stewart to that degree, he’d lost the country. I couldn’t help but agree. But I also couldn’t see a path forward for the Democrats.

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Then came the July 13 assassination attempt that resulted in Trump getting his ear nicked by something while addressing a rally and then, face bloodied, raising a defiant fist as Secret Service agents hustled him offstage. Another seemingly indelible image, giving Trump a gravitas he could never have achieved otherwise, potentially placing him in the august company of Ronald Reagan after the failed Hinckley attack.

In the aftermath, opening just a few days later, the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, WI appeared custom-tailored to capitalize on that image and heroicize Trump as a survivor and a pillar of strength. Instead, it served up a plethora of unimpressive and often unintentionally comical images: proud delegates — almost all of them white — with right ears in oversized bandages that read as menstrual pads; every candidate who lost the primary publicly kissing Trump’s ass; assorted Trump fluffers showering ridiculous praise on him; Hulk Hogan tearing open his shirt; Trump as a bellicose, rambling dotard; and so on.

With the outcome — Trump’s nomination/deification — a foregone conclusion, this convention contained no surprises, making it a bore to watch and, from the evidence, a bore to attend. Its only newsworthy aspect involved the confirmation of J. D. Vance as Trump’s vice-presidential running mate, which has turned out disastrously for the Republicans. (From the evidence, Vance is Sarah Palin without the lipstick, and minus the charm.)

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Up until the convention opened, some had held out hope that the Republicans might actually repudiate Trump and the MAGA forces, or at least open the nomination process to more moderate factions. That wasn’t in the cards; no daylight presently exists between the Republican Party and Trump/MAGA.

Only wishful thinking could have envisioned a totally chaotic crabs-in-a-barrel Republican convention. All the evidence belied the naïve notion that somehow the MAGA party would quickly unite behind any alternative to Trump, with a platform that would appeal to majorities of voters in the right states as needed to win the electoral college, and then sail to victory. In Milwaukee they made their bed, and now, for better or worse, they must lie in it.

Yet a large swathe of the country doesn’t want what they’re selling. So, instead of the usual post-convention bump in the polls, the MAGA Party got … bupkis (a technical term derived from the Yiddish for “little goat fecal pellets”).

The New Switcheroo

Still, Trump and Biden continued to run neck and neck in the polls, and questions about the president’s capabilities did not go away. A seeming impasse, until the Democrats achieved the seemingly impossible: Overnight, they stole Trump’s thunder, and his main line of attack, and his spotlight, and his headline-grabbing antics, by smoothly swapping out Biden for Harris, leaving Trump, his veep pick Vance, and the Republican Party flailing and failing. Sad (for some, I suppose), but joyous and liberating for anyone on the left and even, as it turns out, for many in the center. (Improbably, “Republicans for Harris” is a trending thing.)

Since then, Trump and his campaign have steadily deflated, while Harris now has the wind in her sails. What we learned from this debacle, in a nutshell: As Harris’s sifting through the options for her running mate proved, there’s a terrific generation (or two) of liberal-left Democrats moving up in the ranks, a deep bench. Both Joe Biden’s presidency and his forthcoming departure therefrom have paved the way for them. His historic, selfless decision to step down and work to get Kamala Harris elected so they can continue to implement their progressive agenda enhances his stature while burnishing his legacy.

Meanwhile, Harris has shown herself fully prepared for this moment. That chewing sound you hear? Me eating my hat for doubting that she had what it takes. To the contrary: She’s the 2024 political equivalent of the “it girl,” and her campaign — late start notwithstanding — threatens to turn into a juggernaut. How that sausage got made matters less than the fact that it’s now on the grill.

Some of us, like myself, shilly-shallied, dancing around the serious problem of Biden heading the ticket but never looking it square in the eye. Some, to their credit, confronted it directly. Turns out we can have our cake and eat it too, honoring Biden for his lifetime of service and his last full measure of devotion while fielding a new team that can win and even triumph.

Watching Harris hit the ground running, we can see the decision was right, especially after her savvy choice of Tim Walz for her veep. If she and Walz win — and especially if they win decisively and prove to have long coattails — we will have fought and survived and won a great battle for our souls as the people of this nation.

Some corporate forces and other actors wanted Biden out for the wrong reasons, but shifting the burden of the age factor to Trump and making Harris the vibrant face of the Democratic Party has already proved itself the major turning point in this election. Some of those who forced the crisis that brought this to pass acted in good faith, and righteously. And we need to recognize and thank them for it.

(Part 1 I 2)

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