This Is The Alternative:
In an historicly massive landslide, UK voters kicked out the Conservatives after 14 years. The neo-fascist Reform UK won just 5 seats (out of 650) from the dying Conservatives. Less reported on in the U.S., Iranian voters backed a moderate reformer instead of a MAGA-type hardliner in their runoff election yesterday, 54.76% to 45.24%. And tomorrow, it looks like the left-wing coalition and what’s left of the Macron coalition will successfully turn back the fascist tide in France in that country’s runoff. “In the 500 seats being decided by run-off votes,” reported the BBC today, “217 candidates from the left-wing New Popular Front and the Macron Ensemble alliance have withdrawn to block the RN from winning. Although dozens of three-way races are still going ahead, 409 seats will now be decided by one-on-one contests… One major poll that came out hours before the end of the campaign suggested that the awkward series of withdrawals by third-placed left-wing and centrist candidates had succeeded in scuppering the hopes of National Rally boss Marine Le Pen’s protege of becoming prime minister, aged 28.”
If Biden is elected, he’ll be 82 when he’s inaugurated, a striking numerical inversion. But that’s a very big “if.” Biden’s interview with George Stephanopoulos didn’t inspire confidence among most people petrified about a fascist takeover in the U.S. Biden wasn’t terrible in the interview. But does this look like the guy who’s going to slay the MAGA dragon?
On Tuesday night, Mark Leibovich noted that Republicans aren’t the only party being led by a geriatric egotist who puts himself before the country. And this morning, Chris Cameron noted that “many Democrats who spoke out after the interview… signaled that it had done little to shift their stances, regardless of whether they thought Biden should remain in the race or drop out. A handful of current and former Democratic officials who had called on Biden to end his re-election campaign said the interview had done little, or even nothing, to address their concerns… The president’s critics among the Democrats… said Biden appeared to be out of touch or in denial about his prospects for re-election. Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat who was the first House Democrat to call for President Biden to drop out of the race, said in an interview on CNN shortly after the ABC broadcast that ‘the need for him to step aside is more urgent tonight than when I first called for it on Tuesday.’ He added that Biden ‘does not want his legacy to be that he’s the one who turned over our country to a tyrant.’ Mike Quigley, Democrat of Illinois, also said Biden should step aside, telling CNN that he found points in the interview ‘disturbing’ and that it was clear ‘the president of the United States doesn’t have the vigor necessary to overcome the deficit here. He felt as long as he gave it his best effort, that’s all that really matters,’ Quigley said, recounting Biden’s description of how he would feel if he lost to Trump. ‘With the greatest respect: No.’”
Ro Khanna, Democrat of California and a Biden surrogate, said in a statement that he expected more from Biden to earn the trust of voters— and “that requires more than one interview.”
“I expect complete transparency from the White House about this issue,” Khanna said, “and a willingness to answer many legitimate questions from the media and voters about his capabilities.”
Julián Castro, the former Democratic presidential candidate who has called for Biden to drop out, criticized the president after the interview, telling MSNBC that Biden had been “steadier” in the interview but was in “denial about the decline that people can clearly see.”
Former Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio, who also has said that Biden should step aside, said after the interview, “I don’t think he moved the needle at all.”
“I don’t think he energized anybody,” Ryan said on MSNBC. “I think there was a level of him being out of touch with reality on the ground.”
“I’m worried,” he continued, with a nervous chuckle. “I’m worried, like, I think a lot of people are, that he is just not the person to be able to get this done for us.”
When Shakespeare attempted to portray a version of Biden’s tragedy— the insurmountable challenges aging leaders face and the consequences of their cognitive decline on governance and society— he came up with King Lear, which, basically, is about a national leader descending into madness after making poor decisions, resulting in chaos and suffering. It’s a better description of Trump than Biden but The Economist used President Lear as the title of their piece on senility in high office.
“In 1953,” they recounted, “during his second stint as prime minister, Winston Churchill had a stroke after dinner… For several weeks, as Churchill was incapable of governing, his son-in-law and private secretary in effect ran the country. He never fully recovered, yet refused to stand down until 1955, when he was 80. ‘Churchill is now often speechless in Cabinet; alternatively, he rambles about nothing,’ wrote Harold Macmillan, a future Conservative prime minister, in 1954. For most people, cognitive decline is a private tragedy, scarring loved ones but few others. When it afflicts political leaders, the damage can be catastrophic. Paul von Hindenburg, Germany’s president in 1933, was no fan of Adolf Hitler but let him become chancellor to break a political stalemate. Some historians blame this epic misjudgment on the fact that he was 85, exhausted and perhaps suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.”
Because getting to the top requires such stamina, many successful politicians are “superagers”—people who preserve their physical and mental fitness into old age far better than the average. Researchers at the Mesulam Centre at Northwestern University near Chicago have found that the brains of cognitive superagers (defined as people aged 80 and over whose performance on memory tests is on a par with those two or three decades younger) shrink more slowly in old age than those of their “normal” contemporaries, by 1.1% a year instead of 2.2%.
Specifically, superagers’ cingulate cortices (a bit of the brain important for memory, attention, cognitive control and motivation) remain comparable in thickness to someone in middle age, and their von Economo neurons (cells in the cingulate cortex linked to social intelligence and awareness) are present at higher density than in a typical middle-aged person. They also seem to have fewer of the protein “tangles” associated with Alzheimer’s disease than their contemporaries.
What President Joe Biden’s cingulate cortex looks like is not public information. Both he and Donald Trump were assessed in 2020 by Jay Olshansky, a gerontologist at the University of Illinois, and a team of colleagues, using what information was available. They predicted that the probability of either man surviving the presidential term both were then seeking was more than 90%. For both of them, that was several percentage points more than the actuarial average for men of their age.
However, high office takes a toll, and even superagers must eventually deteriorate. The trouble is that they often fail to accept this fact. And the people around them, whose jobs may depend on the big guy keeping his, have every incentive to deny or conceal it. The British public was kept largely in the dark about Churchill’s fading capacities. American voters were blithely unaware when they re-elected Franklin Roosevelt in 1944 that his doctor doubted he would survive another term. Aides to Jacques Chirac, France’s president from 1995 to 2007, were evasive about a stroke he suffered in 2005.
…In a presidential system such as America’s, aides may find it easier to keep their boss away from unscripted events. Biden’s aides have been accused of doing just that. But even if they were to continue to do so, clips of his disastrous debate will keep playing. Voters may not grasp the nuances of fiscal or foreign policy, but most have seen ageing close-up, and understand that it is a one-way process.
Dr Olshansky reserves judgment about Biden’s sharpness. He says he has received updated medical records from Biden (though not from Trump), but would need to hear more from Biden’s doctor, following the debate, before making any new estimate of the candidate’s condition.
From George Washington to Nelson Mandela, history tends to smile on leaders who bowed out before they had to. For the rest, Goethe has the last word: “An old man is always a King Lear.”
Biden’s team may deny it, but polling since the debate has been disastrous, down everywhere.
If Biden's campaign hadn't actively sought an early debate, he would've easily been re-nominated next month, and we all would be screwed. We may ultimately be screwed anyhow, but the possibiity still remains for a change in course.
The party mandains created this crisis, they papered over it until events forced their hand, and they need to confront it head-on ASAP.
"They predicted that the probability of either man surviving the presidential term both were then seeking was more than 90%." Not particularly relevant. We're hiring someone for the most consequential and stressful job in the world, not selling him life insurance. But like Feinstein and Pelosi, Biden seems to have done little to nothing to groom a successor. Every politician should plan to spend their "last term" advising the successor they prepared to take their place. The elder statesman is a much better look than the doddering old fool clinging to power. Unfortunately, any replacement besides Harris (also a loser), is going to be beholding to deep pocket donors, so it's not a question of if we are screwed, it's a question of…