Dear Journalists, Where Were You a Year Ago?
I was against Biden before it was cool
The following is the transcript of my troop deployment (i.e. ending rant) from episode 112 of my news podcast The Mind Killer. If you like it, please consider subscribing to the podcast
Last August, my troop deployment was to beg someone, anyone, to run against Joe Biden. Here’s a quote: “I really don’t want to get in the situation where Biden has to debate Trump and he comes across as a senile old man. That will kill him in the election. So please, somebody, run against him.”
Pretty much nobody was with me there. Then in November, as primary voting was actually happening, I urged everyone to vote for Dean Phillips. Again, I was the only one. Literally. I don’t know of a single other person or institution who endorsed Phillips. In January, I was warning that Biden was this election’s Hilary Clinton - an anointed leader that nobody wanted who would go down in flames for extremely foreseeable reasons. Again, nobody was with me.
It wasn’t until February that Ezra Klein came out against Biden, but by then it was too late. Biden had already locked up the nomination. And even then, everyone else basically shrugged. So now it’s clear to everyone that Biden is too goddamn old to win this election, but there’s nothing we can do about it. If Biden wants to run for president and lose, he’s going to run for president and lose.
Since the debate, every journalist with access to a column, a blog, a podcast, or a street corner has been calling for Biden to drop out. But it’s too late! Where they hell were all of you a year ago when people like Gretchen Whitmer and Pete Buttigieg needed political cover to run against Biden? Where were you when Dean Phillips was doing the only thing he could think of to stop this? Did you not see this coming? Did you think having an 86-year-old president would be fine? Had you not watched Biden speak? Or move around? Did you not think that, maybe, if he wanted to claim he was able to do a full campaign, we should have demanded he mount a primary campaign? That if he wanted to claim he was able to debate Trump, we should have made him debate a primary opponent or two?
Since it appears that I’m destined to be Cassandra this election season, here’s another prediction: Joe Biden is going to stay in the race, he’s going to lose, and it’s not going to be close. And none of you assholes are going to take your share of the responsibility for it.