'I shall not seek, and I will not accept ...'
A Presidential candidate who cannot win a debate against a convicted felon is clearly not the right man for the job.
Which US president uttered these words?
‘I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.’
Hint: it wasn’t Joe Biden.
Perhaps it should have been. Perhaps it soon will be. Because after his disastrous performance in last night’s TV debate with Donald Trump, Mr Biden is waking up this morning to face mounting demands that he should step aside and let someone else carry his party’s banner into the Presidential election in November.
I can imagine him looking in the bathroom mirror and asking himself: Do I really want to go through with this? Am I really sure that this is what’s best for my country and my party?
And because, I’m sorry to say, Joe Biden is a stubborn old man, I can imagine his answer.
‘Yes, I am. Because if I stand aside now, Trump will win — and that’ll be a disaster. Only I can stop him.’
Over the coming days and weeks, leading Democrats — and, just as importantly, leading Democrat donors — will be testing that proposition to destruction.
It has always been a mystery to me, as someone who has taken an obsessive interest in US politics for more than fifty years, why the Republican party allowed itself to be hijacked by Donald Trump back in 2015. It is now indisputably a party remade in his own image — just as for a time, the Conservative party in this country seemed to have been remade in the image of a tousle-haired, lying charlatan by the name of Boris Johnson.
Now, though, there is a different question. How come there is no one in the Democratic party prepared to stand up and declare that Biden must, for the good of the country that he has served with great distinction over several decades, step aside?
Back in 1968, a Senator by the name of Eugene J McCarthy put himself forward as a challenger to his fellow Democrat, the incumbent president Lyndon B Johnson. He was followed by Robert Kennedy, brother of the assassinated President John F Kennedy.
Johnson stood down (the ‘I shall not seek …’ quote at the beginning of this piece was from his speech on 31 March 1968), and then less than three months later, Kennedy was shot. At a chaotic party convention in Chicago, the Democrats eventually settled on Johnson’s vice-president, Hubert Humphrey, as their Presidential candidate.
He lost to Richard Nixon, so perhaps it’s not so surprising that the Democrats have not so far been keen to try something similar again.
The onus, therefore, is on Biden himself. He has been an effective President, but he is turning out to be a disastrously ineffective candidate.
As he himself might put it: ‘C’mon, man, you know what you have to do.’
A Presidential candidate who cannot win a debate against a convicted felon is clearly not the right man for the job.
One of the Democrats’ problems is that they failed to come up with a succession plan when Biden was elected 4 years ago. They should have selected a more solid VP, who could have been given some high profile assignments and gotten some favorable publicity, making him/her appear to be Biden’s heir apparent in 2024.
America’s presidential politics must seem like a sorry spectacle to you folks across the pond.
Agreed- but concerned that with the New York Times reporting that Biden improved his performance as the debate progressed, Biden can make the argument that he can and will get better. And therefore hang on to the nomination.