(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . I Don't Care How Biden Did. I Care About the System [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-28 I didn’t see the debate. I would have loved to, but married with a young child when you’re in your late 50’s doesn’t always allow you to do what you want, especially once your idea of “late” gets reframed by age and your child’s bedtime schedule. But I’ve certainly seen the responses to the debate this morning, and the unparalleled freakout that they convey. I’ve seen the (thunderously foolish) worries about whether Biden should step down, and a new round of the Democrats’ eternal hand-wringing over whether they can’t get people to vote for their candidate. So let me put this out there — I’d still vote for Biden if he’d been incontinent live on stage, if he’d briefly forgotten his own name or where he was. Here’s why. We were gifted with a beautiful system. We’ll be spending the rest of forever trying to work on its flaws and scraping off the barnacles of bad policies and past injustices, but it’s still a gift of a governmental framework. Not just because it lets us vote. Not just because it secures at least some basic rights. It’s a gift because it’s built on and inherently conveys a basic, immutable tenant — no one’s special. The President is not a ruler — he or she is a public servant. They’re the person we get to handle the paperwork so the rest of us can get on with our lives. They may have a lot of responsibility. They may have a lot of power. At the end of the day, though, they’re as disposable as the landscaper at your local public park. Biden — and all the people that would comprise the executive branch along with Biden — get that. The Cabinet he appoints will, when warranted, say no to him. The heads of the independent agencies, even more so. You can disagree with a President’s policies (and everyone will disagree with some), but any President and Cabinet that works within that system without crashing into those guardrails is only ever going to be able to change the country and its direction to the degree that was intended when our system was devised. We’ve had Presidents die in office, by violence and otherwise. We’ve had one resign. And in my lifetime, we had one who very clearly had drifted into dementia by the end of his second term. And the system still worked. You might hate some of what those Presidents did — I can name off a number of Presidents whose impacts I’ve hated — but they operated within the same latitude I would want for any President I supported. If Biden does lose his mind, his Cabinet — who like him, will be believers in our system — will at worst cover for him and ride out his term (as happened with that other President) or will step in and remove him, letting our normal rules of succession keep the government moving. Because much as I like Biden, he’s not special. He’s as replaceable as anyone else. On the other side, there’s Trump — who, if he even knew and understood the message and mechanics of our system, wouldn’t give a flying damn about it. He expects to be a ruler, and he’ll act like it. He thinks of himself as special, and he’ll transfer that to his governing philosophy (to the degree he has one). The people he will appoint with have only one qualification — that they’ll never tell him no. Not if he wants to shoot protestors in the legs, not if he wants to lock up media figures who criticize him, not if he wants to sell off government assets and pocket the cash. They’re certainly never going to remove him, no matter how dangerously demented he might become. And if he did become so far gone that he didn’t know what was going on, the people he’d pick to surround himself with — Christian nationalists, outright fascists, and blazon grifters — would unquestionably hide it, and would make such horrific decisions in his stead that this country would quickly become unrecognizable. I’m not talking tweaks. I’m talking whether parts of the Constitution will still apply. I’m talking about whether women can vote, or whether being gay is a crime. And if you think they couldn’t do that, then you’re assuming they’ll still operate within the rules — which means you don’t understand who these people would be. And that’s not getting into the matter of sheer incompetence, and the disastrous results that would follow even setting aside their openly noxious ideas (imagine how they’ll handle the next major health crisis, for one). That’s the choice we this year. It’s not about abortion, or tax policy, or Ukraine. It’s about operating within a system that has always had provisions and safeguards for Presidents who become unable to finish the job, that has always limited a President’s power within broad but defined guardrails of what they can and should change in their time in the big chair. It’s about keeping that system, or supplanting with a genuine ruler, who sees himself as indispensable and surrounds himself with lieutenants and flunkies who either agree or pretend to for power’s sake. It’s the choice between America — the good and the bad of it — and some new, authoritarian nightmare country run by fools, fiends, and charlatans. That’s an easy choice. If you hear Democrats agonizing over how Biden did, remind them of that. If you hear some of those political bystanders who are just now getting interested in 2024 expressing concern over his age or his stutter or his optics, explain it to them. I don’t care that Biden looked old, or that he paused too long or talked too softly. The system will handle that, and the government will go on working just fine — but only if we keep they system. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/28/2249320/-I-Don-t-Care-How-Biden-Did-I-Care-About-the-System?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/