Attention has rightly been focused on Biden’s cognitive lapses – the incomplete sentences, the trailing thoughts, the obvious gaps in coherence. The spectacle, which has been obvious to anyone who isn’t a Democratic party surrogate or a diehard party member, has been astonishing to witness. The images of Giorgia Meloni seemingly redirecting Biden at the meeting of the G7, or his frozen visage as Jill Biden sought to drum up enthusiasm for his candidacy, or Barack Obama guiding him off a stage, or his rigid dancing during a Juneteenth celebration have caused many to ask about Joe Biden’s physical fitness and ability to hold the highest office in the land.
Yet, in calling for Biden to step back from running a second time, some Democrats have described the president as “decent” and “a good man”. The opposite is true.
Biden has enabled a ghastly genocide, the starvation of children in Palestine, and his legacy is defined by it. Unfortunately, his record before Palestine also puts the lie to the “decency” myth. His enthusiasm for the Iraq war and the savage destruction of Lebanon in 1982 illustrate his poor judgment and ethical lapses on foreign policy. His opposition to federally mandated desegregation busing, his lazy plagiarism, and his sexist treatment of Anita Hill, a Black woman who was allegedly sexually harassed by the supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, do not comprise a record of decency either.
Donald Trump is a dangerous man. In his first term he employed cartoonishly bad people. Steve Bannon, a criminal and an Islamophobe; Jared Kushner, whose primary achievement appears to have been transmuting an inscrutable role in the White House into a $2bn investment from the Saudis in 2021 and John Bolton, who lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to propel this country into war, all “served” him as president. This time around, we should reasonably expect more of the same. Or maybe worse.
Democrats are right to fret – and, to use the illustrative if childish metaphor favored by the Biden campaign – to wet their beds at the prospect of another meeting between Trump and Biden. The president’s decline is alarming many Democrats. Trump, by contrast, presents as someone who is a little more alert, but is self-indulgent and undisciplined. He comes across as a peevish, unimaginably rich man, who has been so wealthy for so long, whose money has insulated him from the consequences of his actions for so long, whose primary company is sycophantic, that he chooses to rant incoherently. If there is something wrong with his brain, it may be attributable to the long-term effects of money on cognition.
Another Trump-Biden debate is scheduled for 10 September, and, if he remains the Democratic candidate, there is no reason to believe that Biden will fare any better. While cognitive decline is highly mediated by personal characteristics, it does not get better with time; age is age. Today, Biden is unable to meet the challenge posed by Trump – not cognitively, and not ethically.
The argument for replacing Biden was strong as soon as his first “bear hug” embrace" of the “insufferably arrogant” war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu caused him to lose voters in Michigan, an indispensable swing state. And it has grown stronger in the wake of the disastrous July debate. It seems reasonable to believe the polls: Americans will not vote for someone who cannot plausibly hold a regular job to the office of the presidency.
Before the debate, it seemed likely that enough Americans would not vote for someone who actively abetted a genocide, who openly regarded Palestinian lives with contempt, and who cast an entire generation of college students and young people as antisemites and miscreants, to produce a Trump presidency. But politics is dynamic – and presaged does not mean prescribed.
Biden’s poor performance during the debate with Trump may act as an unexpected opportunity for Democrats. Because far from being “a good man” – as Nicholas Kristof, who has spent time documenting aspects of the Israeli genocide, has nonetheless called Biden – Biden’s ethical failures have always been an albatross. He was poised to lose the election even before the debate – an argument that his supporters were able to successfully withstand, primarily by browbeating the realists in the party. But now, with his mental decline so evident, those who seek a different candidate can argue forcefully that he is unfit.
The Democrats do not have to lose this election to Donald Trump. The country, and the world, does not have to contend with another four years of incoherence and ineptitude. As the French election – which saw the Palestine-supporting New Popular Front win a shock victory – shows: the best way to beat the far-right is a strong and principled left.
This race is salvageable. To win, the Democrats must jettison one bad, ailing man. And find someone decent to take his place.
Ahmed Moor is a writer, activist and co-editor of After Zionism: One State for Israel and Palestine
