The 2024 Presidential Election Isn't About What I Want

That's why I'm voting for Joe Biden for President and I think you should too

Full disclosure: I’ve met Joe Biden. I like the guy a lot. I have enormous and much-deserved respect and appreciation for Joe Biden and his many decades of service to our nation. In fact, in just his first three years in office, he has had one of the most accomplished and consequential Democratic presidencies in recent memory. He’s done a lot! You can look it up! Furthermore, I voted for Joe Biden for President in 2020 and I’m going to vote for him again this year.

Having gotten that bit of business out of the way, let me add this: I didn’t, and I don’t, want Joe Biden to be President of the United States.

I’ll explain.

In 2020, I was not particularly excited about Biden either as a Democratic primary candidate or the idea of him as President. Some of my ambivalence was based on his advanced age and clear signs that he’d lost a few miles an hour off his fastball. But it was mostly about wanting the Democratic Party to finally move on from the old (literally geriatric in some cases), center-left cadre of pols that comprised the ranks of its leadership and make room for a new generation of smart, capable, and truly progressive leaders who not only support the policies that will make the country more fair and just, but who can also articulate and campaign for those ideas effectively and persuasively. I still want that.

But Democratic voters, beginning with the South Carolina primary, voted overwhelmingly for Biden to be the party’s standard bearer. There are many theories and opinions about why that was and I’m not going to spend any time summarizing them here. I’ll leave that research to you. I’ll just tell you what I think. Voters, Democratic, Independent, and even Republican, were simply exhausted by the chaos, corruption, and incompetence of the Trump presidency. They wanted, more than anything, a return to decency, competence, and rules and norms-based governance. And, with the memory of Hillary Clinton’s stunning defeat four years earlier still fresh and raw, they wanted as close to a likable and non-controversial nominee as they could get. A candidate who would make it easy for all those independents and suburban Republicans who voted for Obama and are personally disgusted by Trump to vote for a Democrat again. All those wishes coalesced in and came to be embodied by Joe Biden.

And now, Biden, by virtue of his status as the incumbent (which is a real and powerful advantage in electoral politics) and because no serious, well-financed challenger emerged from the younger, more progressive wing of the party, is going to be the nominee again. This time, four years older and even slower on the base paths—to stay with the baseball metaphors.

He also now has a track record to run on. A track record that, for all the good things he has accomplished, also includes statements, decisions, and actions that many of the people who supported his election the last time, mostly on the left, find abhorrent. So much so, that many of those same people are saying that they would rather see Donald Trump win than vote for “(pick a pejorative nickname)” Joe. To quote the sports announcing cliché, “It’s not what you want.”

This brings me to my point: You know what? This election isn’t just about me and what I want. And it’s not just about you and what you want either. Tough. That’s the way it goes. Suck it up, hold your nose, do whatever you have to do and vote to reelect Joe Biden. You know why? Because the alternative really is so. Much. Worse.

The stakes are no longer about policy differences or about reasonable philosophical arguments concerning the role of government. Elections used to be about those things. They’re not anymore. And this election is the extreme case made manifest.

This election is about the possibility of a not-so-secret right-wing cabal of mean, angry, aggrieved, racist, and extremist goons and ignoramuses being placed in positions of power and influence at the highest levels of government by their even more mean, angry, aggrieved, and racist god king and cult leader, with whom we will have entrusted control of the country’s national security, law enforcement and military apparatus. What could possibly go wrong in that scenario?

And if you’re counting on Congress or, good Lord, the Supreme Court, to be a check on Trump’s power and stand in the way of catastrophe, you’re clearly living in your own, made-up fairy-tale world and have no business here. Please be on your way.

I honestly don’t know what else anyone needs to say. But I’ll say one more thing in closing:

I understand that to some of you, there might be some romantic or idealistic attraction to the notion that in the aftermath of whatever disasters befall the country during a second Trump presidency, the great majority of the American People will finally see the wisdom in and be ready for the coming, fair, just, racially tolerant, gender-respecting, non-foreign interventionist, Democratic Socialist future. That from the ashes and remnants of destruction, they will rise and together form that more perfect union.

Here’s what I think about that: it is childish wish casting. I’m sorry, but it is. Leave it there, in your daydreams, and come join the rest of us in the real world, where real people get hurt, and where elections have real and determinable consequences. And for the love of God, vote for Joe Biden for President in November.