To quit, or not to quit, that is the question.
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous kvetching,
Or to take arms against that sea of doubters,
And by opposing, squelch them.
To quit — to sleep.
And by a sleep to say we end
The thousand natural gaffes my lips are prone to.
A consummation devoutly to be wished?
To quit; to sleep.
But then, he calls me “Sleepy Joe.”
Ay, there’s the rub.
For in withdrawal what next may come,
When I have shuffled off this public stage
Must give me pause.
The calamity of so long a life
For one who bears the whips and scorns of time;
The weary load of office;
But that dread of something after politics,
That undiscovered country, from whose ports
No traveler returns, puzzles the will.
And hence that often puzzled look upon my face.
Can I really keep this up for four more months?
Or four more years?
The fate of the world is upon my shoulders.
But will my further battling prevent its end,
Or hasten it?
Have I the strength to beat that festering sore?
Or will my weakness lose for us this war?
I make my choice:
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!
* * *
Listening to Biden’s Thursday press conference, I was almost hoping for a train wreck — to end his candidacy. But he did quite well, addressing foreign policy fairly cogently. The focus on a couple of tongue slips seems ridiculous, given the gravity of the stakes. And Trump’s far worse mental lapses. Indeed, the whole obsession over Biden’s aging seems nuts considering Trump’s immensely more frightening unfitness.
Throughout the session, I kept imagining how that asshole ignoramus, that psychopathic moral black hole, might answer.
Yet the fact remains that Biden can’t defeat Trump. Insane as that is. A vastly bigger looming train wreck, unless something dramatic intervenes. Mainly, Biden’s withdrawal.
What a great thing that would be, thoroughly regenerative, a refreshing jolt to our politics. The logic for him seems unassailable: cement his legacy and go out a hero, instead of being the cause of the very catastrophe he ran in 2020 to prevent. Why can’t he see this?
Ego and self-belief. He’s surrounded and insulated by a small cadre unwilling to tell the Emperor he has no clothes. No path to winning. And for all that my gut screams his bowing out ultimately has to happen, I don’t see enough momentum within the Democratic party to make it happen.
Too many of them terrified of what a Trump victory will mean, yet paralyzed from doing what’s needed to stop it. While those who keep insisting Biden still has what it takes, and they just have to persuade voters (who are ever more persuaded the other way) seem almost as divorced from reality as the entire Republican party, marching in total lockstep behind a candidate they delude themselves is not a monster of depravity.
Rage rage against the dying of the light.
