Government

After The Debate: Now What?

Joe Biden can't recover from his performance on Thursday... can he?

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(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

I think I’m safe for the next four years: I’m white. I’m relatively old. I’m relatively rich. And Donald Trump probably doesn’t read what I write about him here (or at The Daily Beast), so Trump probably won’t put me in jail.

I did say that if I had to cast a vote either for Trump or a hot, stinking turd, I’d vote for the turd.

But maybe Trump didn’t read that. And, until Thursday night’s debate, I really didn’t think the Democrats would put me to the test.

Joe Biden can’t recover from his performance on Thursday. At future campaign events, Biden can read speeches, from teleprompters, to the small crowds that gather to see him. But tens of millions of people watched Biden, unassisted by speechwriters and teleprompters, on Thursday night, and those people won’t forget what they saw.

It’s not Sleepy Joe. It’s Catatonic Joe.

You wouldn’t put Thursday night’s Biden alone in a television studio with Sean Hannity, let alone in a conference room with Vladimir Putin.

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Biden surely can’t be in charge of the nuclear codes. If he has another bad night, we’d all be toast (both literally and figuratively).

Biden’s done.

Is Trump really going to be our next president?

The New York Times did its best after the debate, urging Biden to be a patriot and leave the race. But politicians are power-hungry egotists, and being president is awfully cool, so I doubt Biden will listen. The editorial in the Times probably just guarantees that Biden will lose the election in November. Trump’s political ads showing a decrepit Biden stumbling through his answers during the debate, accompanied by a pull-out quote from the Times saying that Biden’s too old to be president, probably does him in.

What should the Democrats do?

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The Democrats must win the swing states of Pennsylvania and Michigan if they’re going to defeat Trump. If I were in charge, I’d have Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, and Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, replace Biden and Kamala Harris on the Democratic ticket. That offers the best chance of winning Pennsylvania and Michigan. I really don’t care who’s president and who’s vice president; my goal is to defeat Trump, so that’s the Democratic ticket.

Shapiro and Whitmer are governors, so they have no national track record. Perfect! They could say that they’d have done everything that Biden did that was successful — infrastructure? We’d have done exactly what Biden did — and never would have done any of the things that were unsuccessful — Afghanistan? We’d have pulled out more slowly, avoiding the loss of any American lives. Shapiro and Whitmer also present new targets for the Republicans, forcing Republicans to gin up new attack ads. Both governors are relatively young, which is obviously critical in this election, and we’d have one man and one woman on the slate, so we’re ticking most of the identity-politics boxes.

We’d have to do something to placate Harris.  Otherwise, she’d complain about not being on the ticket. Let’s announce that Harris will be the attorney general in the new administration and promise her quietly that she’ll be first in line for any Democratic appointment to the Supreme Court. Wouldn’t that be enough to satisfy here?

Now that we’re at it, let’s announce the names of the whole Cabinet before the Democratic convention. Let’s go pure identity politics here. We need about 50% women on the Cabinet, a handful of African Americans, a handful of Hispanics, a few gay men or women, an Asian, and maybe a Native American or two.

We could also be geographically smart. Name an African American woman from Georgia to the Cabinet, so she could return home to pander campaign for votes in her home (swing) state before the election. Pick a Hispanic from Arizona or Nevada for the same reason.

While we’re at it, let’s put Liz Cheney or Adam Kinzinger in the Cabinet, to give permission for Republicans to vote for the Democratic ticket. Kinzinger’s a white guy; Cheney it is.

Now that I’m thinking about it, let’s make Gov. Shapiro our vice presidential candidate: Shapiro would help with the Jewish vote, and slotting him for vice president, rather than president, would minimize the loss of votes from antisemites or people who are concerned about what’s going on in the Middle East.

Congratulations, Gretchen! You’re the next President of the United States!

You’re quite welcome.

The whole identity-politics kit and kaboodle should hit the road immediately after the convention, swarming the country, and the airwaves, with outreach. It would seem as though the whole Democratic Party were campaigning against Trump, which is basically the idea.

Does this all stink?

Of course it does.

But this ain’t beanbag here; we’re talking about the future of America.

Let’s play for keeps.

Mark Herrmann spent 17 years as a partner at a leading international law firm and later oversaw litigation, compliance and employment matters at a large international company. He is the author of The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law and Drug and Device Product Liability Litigation Strategy (affiliate links). You can reach him by email at [email protected].

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