I Support Joe Biden, Even If He Has a Cold

Just because you think Alfred is too old to take care of the Batcave, you don't replace him with the Joker.

I’ve heard all the drivel from pundits pro and mostly cons about whether the Democratic party should upend the whole system and strike out with a new choice for President.

I'm going to wait for the hysteria to die down and take a deep breath

After a couple days of listening to those who believe they know what they’re talking about, and the New York Times opinion writers in their infinite wisdom telling Joe he should get off the stage and go home, I’ve decided I cannot even fathom the Dems uprooting these many years of preparation and starting from scratch. With who? Why?

I also heard Anne Lamott: “I was blessed to be close friends with Molly Ivans, and I happen to know exactly what she would have said this weekend when asked what she thought was going to happen. She would have said, “Sweatpea? Let’s have this conversation in a week or two.”

I watched Joe Biden come from behind in the 2020 presidential election when nobody thought he could win. I’ve had enormous respect for Joe Biden since he wrote the first Violence Against Women Act in the 1970s, and spent decades working to expand survivor protections. Then as president he reauthorized this landmark law and strengthened it—including increasing support for survivors from underserved and marginalized communities.

Access to affordable health care is one of Biden’s crowning achievements, according to Bloomberg. Job growth in the first three years of his presidency outpaced those of any previous administration. Salary increases have outpaced inflation. Rapid disinflation during his term in office is unmatched in modern history. The cost of living is going down. He’s sparked a revolution with climate policies with how much money is being spent on U.S. energy transition. The economy added 14.8 million jobs over the first three years of his administration. The net worth of families has climbed under Biden, and families are richer than ever. The U.S. stock market loves Joe Biden, the S&P 500 index has returned about 45 percent, more than double the total returns of the rest of the world’s developed-market equities. Despite Trump’s lies, violent crime, especially homicides, have fallen drastically. When Biden took office in 2020, the homicide rate had risen 29 percent, and it started to fall in 2021 before there was an 11.8 percent drop last year – the sharpest on record.

According to Seth Abramson Trump told 602 lies during the debate, a lie every 3.9 seconds in 40 minutes. Check out his Substack page here. Why wasn’t he fact-checked? Why was the NYT editorial board not calling him out on each and every lie? Even MSNBC pundits couldn’t pull it out of immediately calling for Biden to resign instead of fact checking the debate? It was all doom and gloom to a person on that show after the debate. They said we expected Trump to lie and he did … come on.

We all know that Donald Trump lies when he opens his mouth. I sat and watched in horror as he said that Democratics are actually now not only “killing babies” in the last trimester of a woman’s pregnancy, and they’re killing viable babies when they’re born. Infanticide is a criminal in every state and no state has passed a law that allows killing a baby after birth.

Trump refused to own much of the garbage that’s come out of his mouth for which video actually exists. He blatantly blamed January 6^th on Nancy Pelosi, saying that she turned down a chance to deploy the national guard during the riots. Here’s what he said verbatim: “Because I offered her 10,000 soldiers or national guard and she turned them down.” It’s on video that she was begging the President to call on the national guard to protect law enforcement and he refused.

Trump also said “we had the greatest economy in history during my presidency.” Nothing could be further from the truth. We had a massive recession after the pandemic happened in 2019.

Despite my angst at all the lies he was telling that some take as the truth, I was taken aback at Joe Biden’s demeanor during the debates. Biden was tongue-tied, seemed tired, his voice was raspy and he in no way projected leadership. He even seemed confused at times. He’s old. But I don’t believe he’s too old to lead this country, especially given the choice at hand.

He had a bad night. Barack Obama had a bad debate in 2012 against Mitt Romney in 2012 and I feared for his sake in winning the election. He came back and hammered Mitt Romney during the next debate and won the election in a landslide.

Here’s what Biden said after the debate: “I don’t debate as well as I used to, but I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done. The choice in this election is simple. Donald Trump will destroy our democracy. I will defend it.”

I’m going to take a breath. I will wait until the hysteria dies down and stay loyal to Biden. I believe in Joe Biden and I believe he can win the presidency again in November. I want to give Biden a chance to rise to the occasion.

He’s done it before. I believe he can do it again.