Editor’s note: This column was written on July 20, one day before President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race.
The Democratic and Republican parties have served up two poor choices to American voters as the 2024 presidential election approaches. They are not similarly poor. They are not equally poor. But they are, unmistakably, poor choices.
Wendell Griffen
President Joe Biden wants to serve another term. His tenure in office has produced some positive results, without question. But even his staunch supporters recognize that Biden’s memory issues are not to be sneezed at. Despite his reluctance to admit it, Biden is impaired by declining health.
Biden’s June 27 debate performance on CNN against former President Donald Trump was abysmal. Try as he might (and does), Biden cannot “un-ring” the bell that his poor debate performance sounded. Calling Vice President Kamala Harris “Vice President Trump” and calling Ukrainian President Zelensky “Putin” during a recent NATO summit certainly didn’t help his image, at home or globally.
Donald Trump’s issue is character. Trump is a sociopathic liar, bully, cheat and brute. His vice presidential candidate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, called Trump unfit to be president less than a decade ago.
Trump’s previous tenure as president resulted in two impeachments. He lied about the severity of the COVID virus after the World Health Organization warned about it.
Trump’s nominees to the Supreme Court produced a right-wing super majority that overturned Roe v. Wade and threatened women and girls. Trump’s justices overturned laws that promote inclusion in higher education, curbed regulatory power by federal agencies, and recently licensed anyone serving as president to get away with criminal conduct thanks to their manufactured doctrine of presidential immunity, a doctrine nowhere found in the Constitution of the United States.
Trump is a convicted felon, verified sex offender and commercial cheat who mishandled classified documents by taking them with him after his term ended in 2021. He tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election result, encouraged his followers to obstruct governmental proceedings aimed at certifying the 2020 election, and accepts no limits on presidential power.
“Our future as a society demands more than Joe Biden can deliver and Donald Trump respects.”
Biden and Trump are unpleasant choices, but not equally unpleasant. Biden is decent, but physically impaired. Trump is socially, ethically, intellectually and politically corrupt.
The nation deserves better. Our future as a society demands more than Joe Biden can deliver and Donald Trump respects.
The person elected president of the United States as the nation enters the second quarter of the 21st century should be the best person who can do the job, not the most popular choice between a sociopath and someone who confuses the name of his vice president and other world leaders and strangely believes that supporting a genocidal war by Israel against defenseless, starving and sickened Palestinians in Gaza benefits Palestinians.
The Democratic Party has a better option than Biden. Vice President Kamala Harris already is internationally known and vetted. A former prosecutor, Harris respects the rule of law. Harris can rally the divergent constituencies within the American electorate in ways Biden cannot.
Democratic leaders should tell Biden thanks for his service as president and urge him to end his reelection campaign. And Black leaders, whose support rescued Biden’s 2020 candidacy when it was on the verge of collapsing, should tell Biden the 2024 election is about the future of democracy, not his ego.
Black leaders will gain nothing from Biden’s egotistical refusal to end his candidacy but will gain influence by supporting Harris and helping her defeat Trump and his fascist supporters.
Unless Trump is decisively defeated in the Electoral College, the Republican majority of the House of Representative, led by Speaker Mike Johnson (a neofascist), will vote him into office as president. There are clear signs that Biden cannot defeat Trump in several of the battleground states whose votes are crucial to victory. Harris can do so. Biden owes it to the nation to help that happen.
“That will turn what are currently poor choices into a promising future.”
That will turn what are currently poor choices into a promising future.
Harris would be the first woman elected to the highest office in the United States. The outpouring of votes from women, Millennials, workers, seniors, independents and Republicans who disapprove of Trump could produce Democratic majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate.
That’s an outcome Biden can facilitate. That’s a victory he can win. That’s a legacy he can enjoy. And that would be a future Biden can help deliver to the nation and the rest of the world.
Wendell Griffen is a retired circuit court judge in Arkansas and serves as pastor of New Millennium Baptist Church in Little Rock, Ark.
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