We Love You, Joe, But It's Time To Go. Now.

     Up until last Thursday night I, staunchest of Biden supporters, tuned out the media chatter that Joe Biden needed to step down from running for a second Presidential term because of his age.
         But last Thursday night's debate was a bucket of cold water in my face. Up on that stage I saw to my shock a frail, sometimes confused elderly person who looked as if he needed to be home in bed and not on a debate stage. And definitely not in the Oval Office for another four and a half years.
         This dismal observation was only reinforced when Biden was led shuffling off the stage by his wife Jill, who was soon after captured on video sounding like a school teacher talking to a small child when she assured Joe that he did a great job at the debate because he answered every question and knew all the facts.  The pathos was almost unbearable. 
           But what I saw that night revealed and unequivocally drove home for me, and not for me alone,  that Joe Biden is in no physical or likely mental condition to serve another term as President of the United States. This wasn't a bad debate. It was the inescapable toll of age.
            Did President Biden look much better at a rally the following afternoon? Yes, he did. However that event was held earlier in the day than the debate was, and Biden was  reading from a teleprompter before an energizing crowd. This is consistent with a revelation in an article published two days ago by the news site Axios in which White House aides shared that the President is generally engaged only between the hours of 10 am and 4 pm and that outside that time range he tends to be fatigued and prone to verbal miscues.
            Which begs the question: How long before the six-hour window of capability for the President shrinks from six hours down to  five hours, then four hours, then no hours? 
            In a perfect or at least sensible world, those nearest, dearest and most listened to by Joe Biden would have been hit with the same bucket of cold water that hit me and many others of the 50 million who watched the debate, and by today President Biden would have been standing before the American people announcing that, due to his advanced age, he would not be running for another term. 
           But as of today Joe Biden, with the support of  his family and his aides, appears to be doubling down on the message that he will stay in the race. This is bad. Many of us have had to deal with an aged parent no longer able to drive who won't hand over their car keys, or who can no longer care for themselves but won't leave their homes for a care facility. And then there is the unfortunate case of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg who, at 87 years old and suffering from pancreatic cancer, refused to retire from her seat on the Supreme Court. It can be next to impossible to get an elderly person to give up what they need to but don't want to give up.
          Nor does it help that some Democratic voices are saying that Biden has to stay in the race because he has the greatest chance of any other potential Democratic candidates of beating Donald Trump in November. But how can that be true for someone in such an obvious state of age-related decline as we all saw in Biden last Thursday night? In fact the consideration needs to be not  how competent he is now of leading our country but how competent he'll be a year from now, two years from now, four years from now. Age, sadly, does not move backwards.
            Joe Biden has been a great President with a legacy of numerous important accomplishments during his tenure. But last Thursday night we saw what we saw and heard what we heard.  I believe in my heart that there is someone out there who can now step in for Biden, run on his platform and have a better than fighting chance of defeating the amoral, self-serving, narcissistic and vengeance-driven felon who may otherwise glide into the White House on Election Day.
​           Please, President Biden. Please step out of the race. Now.

        Reference: 
​        https://www.axios.com/2024/06/29/two-bidens-trump-debate-2024-president