President Biden – Retire with Great Honors?

by Vijaya Chandrasoma

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jnr., born on November 20 1942, has not led the life of an ordinary octogenarian. It is more a saga of unspeakable tragedy, grief, disease, combined with a character of resilience, courage and tenacity, which has enabled him to overcome the misfortunes of the past and reach the pinnacles of success in his chosen career.

Raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania and educated at the Universities of Delaware and Syracuse Law, New York, Biden married Neilia Hunter in 1966. They had three children. He turned to politics and was elected to the US Senate from Delaware in 1972. A month later, his wife and daughter were killed and his two sons seriously injured in a car accident. He contemplated suspending his political career, but was persuaded to remain in the Senate, the longest-serving Senator from Delaware.

In 1977, Biden married Jill Jacobs, an educator, and they have one daughter. As a Senator, Biden focused on foreign relations, criminal justice and drug control. In 1988, Biden ran for the Democratic presidency, but withdrew for health reasons. He ran again in 2008, but his political campaign never gained momentum. When Obama won the Democratic nomination, he named Biden as his running mate. The Obama-Biden ticket defeated Republicans McCain-Palin in November 2008. They were re-elected for a second term when they defeated Romney-Ryan handily in 2012.

Yet another tragedy struck Biden’s life in 2015, when his eldest son, Beau, died of brain cancer. Losing a wife and one child is the ultimate tragedy any man should have to endure. Losing a second child is unbelievable torture.

Biden was high in the favorability ratings for the presidency in 2016, with his candor, affability and five-decade long experience in politics, including eight years of outstanding service as Vice President in the most successful and scandal-free Obama administration.

However, with his wife, Jill and President Obama at his side in the Rose Garden, Biden said that “the window for a successful campaign has closed”, consequent to the family’s grief on Beau’s death.

In addition to these tragedies, Biden suffered two life-threatening brain aneurysms in 1988. In February, he underwent microsurgical craniotomy at the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C. The chances of surviving the surgery were more than 50%, but “the chances of waking up with serious deficits were even more concerning”.

Biden was kept completely isolated during his recovery. However, he suffered a second brain aneurysm in May. The surgeon said before the operation that his chances of recovering from a second aneurysm were not great.But recover he did. By August, he was pronounced “fully recovered” and was given the OK by his doctors to return to normal life, a return to Congress.

Dr. Neal Kassell, who performed the surgery nearly three decades ago. said that Biden shows no signs of brain damage “either from the hemorrhage or from the operations he had. He is every bit as sharp as he was 31 years ago. I can tell you with absolute certainty that he has no brain damage whatsoever”.

A statement made in 2019, four years ago, before Biden won the presidency.

Biden proved that his brain was indeed as sharp as a needle when he “stole” the 2020 election from Republican incumbent Donald J. Trump. The perfect crime, as he defeated the self-confessed “greatest president in the history of the United States” by the popular vote of seven million votes, and an Electoral College margin of 302/236.

Trump disputed the result and has refused to concede, claiming that he had indisputable evidence of election fraud. The Dominion voting machines had been manipulated with lasers by Jews from outer space to change Trump votes to Biden. Venezuelan friends of long dead President Hugo Chavez had bribed Republican election officials in the swing states. Finally, he had documentary proof that dead people voted for Biden in large numbers in Pennsylvania. Strangely, all these dead voters were Democrats.

His lawyers submitted 60 cases of election fraud, which were all dismissed for lack of a shred of evidence by the Justice System, including the Trump controlled Republican Supreme Court.

Thousands of Trump patriots staged a peaceful protest on January 6, 2021, at the Capitol, to challenge the stolen 2020 election. They implored Vice President Pence to act according to the Constitution and declare the 2020 election null and void. No violence whatsoever, just a bunch of tourists enjoying a picnic at the Capitol grounds. After all, their beloved leader had gained international recognition over the years as the Law and Order President.

This is the version of the worst attack on the nation’s democracy propagated by Trump and his MAGA (Make America Great Again) Republicans. An account against all video evidence of a violent insurrection, with threats to lynch Vice President Pence. An insurrection Trump incited, for which he is now facing imminent indictment and arrest for sedition.

Pence certified the election of President-elect Biden, in defiance of the orders of his leader, at the risk to his life and that of his family. Pence is the unlikely unsung hero who saved the democracy of the country on that fateful day.

The law stipulates that top-secret and classified documents belong to the government and have to be returned to the National Archives when the outgoing president vacates the White House.Trump had stolen boxes of classified and top-secret documents when he left the White House, storing them in insecure locations at his properties in Mar a Lago, Florida and Bedminster, New Jersey. He was requested to return these to the NARA on numerous occasions. When he refused, the FBI raided Mar a Lago, with the authority of a subpoena, and seized most of the stolen boxes of documents stored in insecure locations.

Trump, in his defense, acknowledged that he had taken and retained these top-secret documents, but had declassified all of them, some telepathically. However, he denied that stealing and refusing to return government documents, classified or not, is against the law, claiming that the documents belonged to him in his capacity of president.

He has been charged, indicted and arrested of stealing and refusing to return top-secret documents belonging to the government, on 37 felony counts under the Espionage Act.Special Counsel, Jack Smith, who was appointed by Attorney General Garland to investigate the charges, has been gifted with a star witness to the Prosecution: Donald J. Trump, himself.

Last Monday, a Summer 2021 audio recording of a Trump speech at a meeting at his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club was released. The attendees did not have security clearance to access classified information. Actually, neither did Trump.

At this meeting, Trump was waving documents which he said gave details of a US plan to attack Iran during his presidency. He acknowledged that he had held on to these classified, top-secret Pentagon documents, undercutting his earlier lies that he had declassified all documents illegally retained by him.

His latest defense against what seems to be a blatant act of espionage is that he was just trying to impress the audience by lying to “show off”, it was “sheer bravado”. He had done nothing wrong, the documents he was waving were just magazine articles, newspaper clippings and personal documents. Lies completely at variance with his statements in the audio.

In spite of these new alleged crimes, added to his past convictions, Trump still leads the polls for the Republican nomination. Polls have always been a snapshot of time. Trump’s currently and seemingly superiority in the numbers have recently been shown signs of plummeting like the Titan submersible. His candidacy will probably implode similarly before long.

It sure looks like Trump’s luck is running out. Last Tuesday, the Supreme Court delivered what has been hailed as one of the most consequential rulings since the framing of the constitution. A ruling that preserves the integrity of future presidential elections, the cornerstone of our democracy, by preventing state legislatures from interfering or playing any role in these elections. This was the loophole Trump used in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election. The strategy he would have tried again in 2024, with even more violence, had he been the Republican candidate who lost that presidency.

After his arrest under the Espionage Act, Trump thundered that “Biden will forever be remembered as the worst president in history, and, even more importantly, together with a band of his closest thugs, misfits and Marxists, tried to destroy American democracy”.

There has never been a better example of classic projection, the insane hallucination that his enemy has committed the exact crimes of which he is guilty.

Biden inherited from the Trump administration an economy teetering on recession, a raging pandemic and a completely polarized nation plagued with racial and religious violence. Predictably, Trump accepted no responsibility for this economic failure, systemic racism and polarization. It was always someone’s else fault, according to Trump.

President Biden has delivered 30 months of productive legislation. The economy is improving. Unemployment figures are at their lowest levels, with over 13 million new jobs being added to date. Inflation is high but under control. The enactment of his American Rescue Plan, Part 1 of his Build Back Better Framework, has already given immediate financial assistance to Americans reeling under the vagaries of the pandemic.

The Act also addresses climate change, income equality and the rebuilding of the country’s crumbling infrastructure. His Build Back Better Framework promises to rebuild the backbone of the country, the middle class, by making the billionaires and corporations pay their fair share for the development of the nation.

However, in the past few weeks, Biden has shown mental and physical deterioration – more verbal gaffes than normal, stumbling (thrice) climbing airline steps, falling over a sandbag; and these are only examples of decay seen when the cameras were on him. My concerns are not entirely about age. They are about the symptoms Biden is showing as a result of the extreme grief of his personal tragedies and long-term after-effects of brain aneurysms, symptoms of cognitive problems, muscle weakness and numbness, imbalance, which may well get worse, come November 2024, still 16 months away.

The problem for Democrats will arise if conservative, non-MAGA Republicans dump Trump and nominate a pre-Trump brand of a conservative Republican. Former Arkansas Governor, Asa Hutchinson, former Texas Congressman, Will Hurd, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, among many others, fit the bill and have already declared their candidatures. More will follow, as Trump’s fortunes keep declining.

So the Democratic choice is clear. We could continue with our historic tendency to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory – as we did in 2000 and 2016. Gore and Hillary Clinton conceded when they should have kept on fighting, while the results of both elections were hardly conclusive. They both won the popular vote by 500,000 and three million, respectively.

Or we could get serious about winning, and come to terms that the odds of Biden remaining capable of handling the exigencies of the toughest job in the world for four more years from 2024, or speaking candidly, even remaining alive till the end of his second term, are zero to nothing.

We should therefore persuade Biden to retire, with great honors, with universal gratitude for his magnificent service to the nation for over a half century, in the face of unspeakable personal tragedy and life-threatening health episodes.

However, if Biden insists on contesting a second term, then we should encourage Democratic candidates from an extremely talented pool – Harris, Newsom, Buttigieg, Whitmer, Klobuchar, Warren, Goldman, and many others – to challenge him in the primaries. According to the polls today, 64% of Democratic voters don’t want Biden to run, but will vote for him if there is no viable alternative.

So let the voters nominate, through the primaries, that viable alternative they seek as the Democratic candidate for 2024. Any one of the Democrats named above will defeat a contender from a Party which came damn close to destroying our democracy in 2020.

A likely series of future progressive Democratic administrations will enable us to continue with the progressive, Woke, if you will, movement initiated by Roosevelt, followed by Clinton, Obama and Biden, never to forget Bernie Sanders.

The movement which will finally ease us into the 21st century, and join all the other developed nations of socialist democracy, whose citizens enjoy a high degree of social justice and economic equality. Which we, as the citizens of the richest and most powerful nation in the world, have been denied for too long.