It has been a rough couple of weeks, living with a sinking feeling in my stomach that the country was about to fall off a cliff. For reasons I can't explain, I have been really moved by the argument that the world's democracies should be standing behind Ukraine in its struggle to push back against its Russian invaders. I'm also sick over the fact that the rightists are not satisfied with putting women's lives at risk because they can't get a doctor to help them with ectopic pregnancies, but are actually trying to make birth control more difficult and have advanced as a vice presidential candidate a man who suggests that when a women has a husband who beats her that she should just tough it out. Or that hundreds of thousands of people who entered the country illegally but built happy healthy families with American wives and children could now be rounded up, thrown in concentration camps and deported. Cruelty hangs thick in the American air.
That agonizing dread is a response to the consensus I've sensed that Trump was pretty certain to win the election in November.
And then today, at long last, the frustration has lifted over whether Biden would withdraw from the race. He isn't in the Oval Office but holed up in the summer White House in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, an old man sick with Covid. That probably explains why he made the announcement by letter rather than by TV address to the nation.
I came out as a democratic socialist back in 2015 and 2016 when the democrats were struggling over who should follow Obama. I was a strong supporter of Bernie Sanders (still am), and agreed to go with Hillary if she became the candidate running against Trump, and was not at all keen on Biden, seeing him as too representative of mainstream capitalist America, too much the "establishment," too elitist, too much of the reason why so many Americans were looking for a leader to fix all they saw wrong with America.
I have not changed my mind that there is much wrong with the lack of equity in America, and I think I understand where the impulse comes from to tear it all down and start over, but recently I've become a Biden supporter because the Trump solution to the problem has struck me as the most wrong-headed notion I've ever encountered in my lifetime. I became not just anti-Trump; I came to respect Biden as a whole lot of relief following what I saw as a disastrous Trump administration. I think he is a decent man, and I think he has been more than effective as a first executive. I like the guy.
I stayed on the fence over whether he should withdraw as long as I did because I didn't feel I had enough information on who might best defeat Trump. I still don't, but somehow the news of Biden's withdrawal gives me hope. It's possible for democrats to rally behind Kamala Harris - or another candidate - and get more directly and intensely focused on fighting back against the almost inhuman policies the professional liars that make up the Trumpist Republican Party have in store for us. Suddenly I feel the depression lifting a bit. Not entirely - I'm far too cynical to celebrate victory prematurely - but moving in that direction. And if you want to really enjoy the change in direction, have a listen to The Bulwark with Tim Miller here for an indication of what's likely to come. Start at minute 15:49, if you haven't got time for the whole thing.
What fun to suddenly be able to entertain positive questions like could Kamala select Gretchen Whitmer and bring on for the first time in history a two-female ticket? Why not? How many two-male administrations have we had? No logical reason why a two-female ticket couldn't pull it off. Or how about Pete Buttigieg as VP and a black woman married to a Jewish man partnered with a gay man?
Can't believe the country would go that far into liberal territory, so I'm not serious about suggesting it. But I do like the idea of a Harris-Shapiro ticket, and he, along with Whitmer, seem to be the leading prospects because they both are popular administrators of large swing states. That's something I could get excited about.
And I have to admit the chauvinist in me is perking up at the thought that a local girl could be running for president. Kamala calls Berkeley/Oakland home, as do I, and that makes me smile from ear to ear.
The fat lady hasn't sung yet, by any means, so it's way too soon to know where things are going.
But damn, doesn't it feel good to feel some hope again?
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