Dear Team Biden-Harris,
Look, I get it. This is really about Biden. Really about Biden now. Joe, you don’t want to step down, relinquish power, give up. That would mean admitting defeat, and Trump is the last man to whom you want to admit defeat. Not now, not ever. Trump will feast on your resignation, suck the marrow out of them bones and go crunch crunch crunch. To have beaten him in 2020 and not even have the chance to beat him in 2024 is so great a blow it’s best to stay the course, face him in the general election and roll the dice on the game board that has become America.
But think about it. Your chances are not good, they’re downright dismal, and this is coming from someone who’s going to vote for you regardless of how poorly you did in the June debate. Since you bombed that debate (you did!) I have received on average 10 (TEN!) messages begging for campaign contributions A DAY. Yes: each day. On July 18th, I counted 11 messages, although two of those were repeats.
I have yet to give so much as a penny. Why? Joe, I want you to remember back four years ago, when the pandemic raged and you were our hope. When you won the election (you did!) you said, in so many words, that you would serve only one term and then pass the baton to someone else. I believed you then; I thought your words wise. Your decision made sense. I thought, He’s going to be 81 in his final year in office. That is old. My maternal grandparents didn’t live to see 81. The presidency takes a lot out of a man. Case in point: the change in Obama’s hair color over his eight years in office. If Obama can go so gray, think about what even four years are going to do to Joe Biden, who already served in the Senate and as Vice President for so long. It’s going to be, I thought then, just too much.
My thoughts have proven true, and you’ve gone back on your word, Joe. You didn’t make plans to pass on the baton. You didn’t look ahead. You didn’t anticipate. Perhaps you felt Harris wasn’t the right person to pass the baton to, but you chose her as your vice president, did not replace her during your four years, and, honestly, at this point I would give money to a campaign in which she was the presidential candidate. Age is no longer just a number, man. Anyone younger. In four years you did well, Joe. You were a good president. But this lack of planning, this obscuring the truth about aging, is concerning and a potential terrible stain on your legacy. Several of these desperate-for-donation messages claim you’re not staying in the race for your legacy (yourself!), but if that was true you would step down and pass the baton as you said you would do when, four years ago, you served as a stopgap for what is now about to befall this country.
I feel your pain, I really do. The situation sucks, but I am shocked day after day in the lead-up to this election, quite possibly the last free and fair election in my lifetime, that little to no thought seems to have been put into anticipating and countering any moves made by the other side. It’s as if Team Biden-Harris suddenly woke up to the reality of just how powerful a force MAGA is and has been for several years now, and just now I’m receiving messages harping on the extreme dangers of a second Trump term (believe me, I know!) and pushing Dark Brandon mugs accompanied by clips of Joe drinking coffee (egad!).
It’s not too little, but it is too late. I haven’t felt this disengaged with a presidential candidate since, well, never. And the thing is I like you, Joe. I’ll vote for you, but I don’t think it’s going to do you much good.
The window is fast closing to pass that baton. Soft authoritarianism modeled after Viktor Orban’s Hungary is at the gates. Passing the baton may not do much good at this late date, but at least it will have been passed.
But to whom? Gen X, man. We’re not just a bunch of slackers. We’re not just a bunch of stoners. Give us a chance to take on the little millennial. Have faith in the future.
Oh. And one more thing: if you do choose to stay in this thing to the bitter, crushing end, do me a favor: stop sending so many plea-for-donations messages.
Hoping against hope,
DME
