The question is this: Do Americans eager for a change know enough now about Joe Biden to vote for him with enthusiasm?
Are they persuaded of his decency, his compassion, his competence, his humility, his experience? Does his life story, with its monstrous share of tragedy in the loss of his first wife, his baby daughter and, most recently, his son, fill their hearts? Do they care that he had eight years of experience as vice president while the economy saw its longest expansion in history? Do they believe he is genuine in his concern for working men and women?
Do they see him as a dedicated public servant and bridge builder, a man admittedly four years older than the man currently in the Oval Office, not flashy, a man prone to word gaffes and wordiness, but a man committed to health care for all?
Or will they mainly be voting against a president named Trump who in three-and-a-half years has done arguably more damage to this country than a season of hurricanes and tornadoes and derechos. A man who denied the seriousness of the coronavirus, seeks flattery from dictators, lined his pockets with taxpayer dollars, destroyed diplomacy and key American alliances, calls climate change a hoax, separated thousands of children from their parents and disdained the rule of law. A man who has been proven to lie in office more than 20,000 times.
A man the rest of the world laughs at, a man who gave up America's mantle of protecting human rights.
There is not much point in discussing the votes of about 43% of voters. They are cult followers of a con man. They have proven repeatedly there is nothing so evil he could do that they would not approve. They follow and imitate, like lemmings. Even the most ardent of evangelicals dismiss his extramarital affairs, his cruelty to immigrants, his personal nastiness, his delight in humiliating others. They publicly deny their faith whenever they mindlessly cheer his latest assault on public decency, wearing their made-in-China MAGA hats.
Most recently, Trump cheered as his henchman removed mail boxes and sorting equipment to speed up mail delivery. He fired career managers trying to operate efficiently despite being required by law to set aside 75 years of pension funds. Trump ordered the destruction of the Postal Service to try to win reelection as millions choose to vote by mail rather than vote in overcrowded polling stations during a pandemic. Most Republicans in Congress, which used to be an equal branch of government, said nothing.
It remains to be seen how many postal boxes and sorting machines will be put back in operation. Trump insists the post office, which handles a billion pieces of mail at Christmas, will buckle at handling millions of ballots.
Unless he wins, Trump has served notice that he will denounce the Nov. 3 election as fraudulent; he will refuse to leave office. He will trash another American norm _ the peaceful transfer of power.
Trump's people are cynically encouraging a celebrity rapper who has shown public signs of mental illness, a Trump supporter named Kanye West, to run pointlessly for president to take votes away from Biden. (West's wife, Kim Kardashian, says her husband has great difficulty dealing with his bipolar disorder.)
Even after the Senate finally produced a bipartisan report showing that the Trump campaign in 2016 illegally worked hand in hand with Russia to elect Trump illegally, Trumpsters don't care. They are still blindly in love with their leader, who promises falsely he can remake America into a land where white supremacy reigns again. Trump followers are the political lemmings of our day, agreeing to the ruination of thousands based on false rumors, outright lies and demonization.
Like their leader, they can rationalize the pointless deaths of 175,000 Americans, and counting, because they cannot admit that they misplaced their hope in a vile, unempathetic vessel, an incompetent businessman who declared bankruptcy six times, who let the economy run into the ground.
The "virtual" Democratic convention was the best job Democrats could do during a pandemic. We missed the crowds, the funny hats, the balloons, if not the overly long speeches. Probably, the vast millions who didn't watch missed the message of a good man seeking to do right.
Probably, if Biden manages to be elected and, better yet, take the oath of office, it will be because Americans chose a president who is NOT a con man, not a liar, not a cheat, not a narcissist, not a misogynist, not a racist, not an autocrat, not an incompetent, not willfully uninformed, not cruel and not a danger to national security.
Just a regular guy named Joe.
