Post-debate, it's time to clean the junk drawer

Democrats owe it to the nation to find a way to beat Donald Trump

Everybody needs them, but sometimes the junk drawer isn’t where you turn to find the tools you need.

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Every home has a junk drawer. We have three — hey, they’re small! — and they’re filled with quite useful stuff that we’ve kept for good reasons, I’m sure. There are chopsticks in paper wrappers, corks from wine bottles, an extra container of superglue and a roll of scotch tape, odd batteries, small screwdrivers, a boxcutter, rubber bands, string, toothpicks, a tape measure and a plastic ruler that seems to be a souvenir from somebody’s trip to New Mexico.

When I opened the drawers the morning after the presidential debate that pundits nearly unanimously considered disastrous for Joe Biden, they looked like nothing so much as what must have been the state of the president’s brain after days of debate preparation with his staff: a jumble of practical items that are nearly impossible to remember, retrieve and use when you need them. No disrespect intended, mind you, in describing what’s inside Joe Biden’s head as a junk drawer; as I said, those drawers are filled with value.

Or maybe my junk drawers are better seen as a metaphor for the Democratic party right now: a lot of component parts that need to be cleaned out and organized to make them ready for the next job. That is, once some of the stuff inside is pitched.

Before you conclude that you’ve read enough already about that debate, thank you very much, and you’re ready to move on, please give me a moment. We can’t just slam the junk drawer shut and forget about it till the next time we need a rubber band. This is too important. We can’t expect that junk drawer to clean itself up before the next presidential debate, or the election.

It was projected before this week’s debate that 70 percent of Americans would watch, which made it consequential. Two-thirds of the respondents to CNN’s flash poll afterwards said that Donald Trump won the debate, which is enough to move a tiny polling advantage for Trump in key states into a margin of victory in November. If there’s any comfort for Democrats, it could be in the same poll’s finding that 44 percent of those who watched said they had no confidence in Trump’s ability to lead the country. Except that 57 percent likewise said that about Biden. So that, too, suggests that ignoring the message of the debate will likely give us another term of Trump in the White House. That’s not something we can tolerate.¹

If we needed a reminder of the stakes, the Supreme Court’s three Trump appointees gave us that a few hours after Trump practically waltzed and Biden rather shuffled off the stage. The conservative-dominated court made the prosecution of hundreds of rioters and Trump himself in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol more difficult, and then struck down the so-called Chevron doctrine, a regulatory framework that for decades has enabled the federal government to act on such critical issues as public health and the climate crisis. The day before, the court had mostly sidestepped a chance to knock down one more state’s effort to block women’s reproductive rights, a threat that is possible only because Trump named stringent abortion rights opponents to the court. Now, thanks to Trump and his partisans, decisions about whether a pregnant woman will bear a child are made in vast stretches of the country not by that woman, but by the state.  

Of course, if we hadn’t been so distracted by Biden’s bumbling performance during the debate — his incoherent answers, failure to pounce on Trump misstatements, and inability to articulate even his own usual talking points — then we would have better noticed Trump’s own awful showing. As he always does, Trump lied outrageously and incessantly: He said the U.S. budget deficit and trade deficit were at their highest points ever, which is not true now, but was true, in fact, during his administration. He claimed that his tax cuts, which mainly benefited the rich and corporations at the expense of working families, paid for themselves; the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that they added $8.4 trillion to the debt. He took credit for Biden’s initiative that reduced the cost of insulin to $35 a month. In response to a question about climate change, he talked about pollution, and said that he had produced “the H2O best numbers ever,” whatever that might have meant. His most memorable comment was surely, “I didn’t have sex with a porn star,” which we can pretty much guarantee no previous presidential candidate has felt compelled to declare. A criminal court jury, incidentally, apparently disagreed.

Most significantly, perhaps, Trump refused to commit to honoring the election results, and claimed that the Capitol attack he instigated — an assault intended to overturn a fair national election — was then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s fault, repeating a lie he’s made before that she turned down his offer to bring in 10,000 National Guard troops. There was, in fact, no such offer, and the District Columbia commander of the Guard has testified that Trump’s Pentagon that day delayed the deployment of troops for hours while Trump loyalists stormed the halls of Congress and the president watched on TV.

There’s more, of course, but the point that should be clear is that Trump — a twice-impeached ex-officeholder, a convicted felon, a teeming receptacle of lies, incompetence and mental instability — remains a grave threat to our democracy. That’s why Joe Biden’s terrible showing in the debate, making him more likely to lose in November, means that he shouldn’t be the Democratic standard-bearer this fall.

Biden has compiled an impressive record in the White House, and his tenure has made this a better nation — facts that Fox News and other right-wing media outlets do not report, which contributes to his low popularity. He engineered a once-in-a-generation investment in infrastructure and launched major initiatives to fight climate change. Job growth, stung by the pandemic at the outset of his term, has outperformed any previous administration, and salary increases have outpaced inflation — so that the cost of living is now going down faster than any time in modern history. Family net worth has climbed. Stocks are booming, violent crime is falling and the number of Americans with no health insurance is at an all-time low. America has stepped up to defend Western Europe in the face of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, and is working to bring an end to a tragic war in Gaza without much help from Israel’s pugnacious leader.²

There’s more, but the fact is that many of Biden’s accomplishments will be lost if Trump regains the White House. During his term, Trump took a wrecking ball to anything that bore Barack Obama’s imprint, and that’s surely what he would do to the Biden legacy if he returns to office. Moreover, Trump is poised to put in place thousands of officials whose loyalty will be to him, rather than to the nation. He has vowed to use the government to take revenge on his political opponents, even if he has to disregard the Constitution to do so. Twice impeached, convicted of felonies linked to election fraud, ordered by a judge to pay $355 million for civil fraud, convicted by a jury of defaming and sexually abusing a woman, Trump does indeed have “the morals of an alley cat,” as Biden put it during the debate.

Indeed, Trump should be on the run, not running for president with an enduring, if slight, lead in the polls. His debate performance should have disqualified him, even if millions of misled voters are still in thrall of his con game. Joe Biden’s singular job this week was not to do more to burnish his fine record as president, but rather to spotlight Trump’s weaknesses and assert his own ability to send the former president back to the golf course and the party circuit. In that, Biden failed spectacularly. It is a failure with huge ramifications for the American people, and the Democratic party ought to do all it can to prevent the worst outcome — namely, the re-election of Donald Trump.

Pushing aside a sitting president is a fraught notion. It’s rare, but not unprecedented: In August of 1974, Barry Goldwater and the Republican leaders of the House and Senate visited the White House to tell Richard M. Nixon that he couldn’t survive a Senate impeachment trial; Nixon announced his resignation the next day. Five 19^th century presidents were denied their party’s nomination, the last one 140 years ago, when New York’s Chester A. Arthur alienated his political supporters by attacking the patronage system that had elevated him to office. He was dumped by his Republican party, which may have led to the election of a New York Democrat, Grover Cleveland. Cleveland was in turn defeated for re-election, only to come back four years later as the only president to regain the office he lost.

The risk that Trump could win the second restored presidency is certainly a risk the Democrats face if they turn away from the one person who has beaten Donald Trump, fair and square, under our Constitutional system. But this week’s events underscore that it’s increasingly unlikely that Biden can do that again. Which means the Democrats should embrace an alternative quickly, rather than looking away from the train wreck that was the reality of the debate for them, and pretending that all will be fine. They owe the nation a better candidate.

Imagine, then, a visit to Joe Biden in the Oval Office by a delegation of senior Democrats — maybe an Obama and a Clinton, a Schumer and a Pelosi — to tell him, with gratitude, that his last act of good for the nation is to step aside. Imagine that the president might accede, with the patriotic humility that he has often displayed. What would then happen? We can almost certainly predict where Biden’s party would turn next: As The Washington Post’s Philip Bump notes, the Democrats already have chosen someone to be next in line for the presidency. Coincidentally — or was it presciently? — columnist Jennifer Rubin wrote several days ago about the “political maturation” of Vice President Kamala Harris. “She appears relaxed, confident and centered in formal and informal settings,” Rubin wrote. “And she appears to relish taking on bullies.”³

Wouldn’t that have been a welcome sight during the debate? Imagine Harris, 19 years younger than Trump yet seasoned in the courtroom and in debate at all levels of government, facing down his bloviation and mendacity; think, too, of the impact her energetic candidacy could have in luring voters of color, women and the 59 percent of voters who told Ipsos, in a poll concluding Friday, that they have an unfavorable view of Donald Trump — the same percentage, incidentally, who likewise see Joe Biden in an unfavorable light.⁴ In the rare polls that have matched Harris and Trump, the vice president’s standing against the former president is roughly the same as Biden’s was before his awful debate showing. And she hasn’t begun to campaign directly against Trump as his equal on the national stage.⁵ It all adds up to this: If I were a Democratic insider, I’d take my chances on the better fighting chance that Kamala Harris — who has grown into “a formidable candidate,” in Rubin’s view — would seem to have.

We know Joe, and we have got to be forever grateful that he displaced the toxic Trump from the White House and then effectively pursued a thoughtful agenda over these nearly four years. But to prevent a return of the chaos and near occasion to catastrophe that stalked America throughout the Trump term, Democrats owe us another candidate. We need them to clean the junk drawer, or maybe just close it and reach instead into the toolbox for a way to get the job done.

1. https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4745445-biden-debate-poll-trump-victory/

2. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-opinion-biden-accomplishment-data/

3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/23/harris-voice-abortion/

4. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/joe-biden/

5. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/28/kamala-harris-trump-matchup/

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NEWSCLIPS FROM THE UPSTATES

Dispatches from our common ground *

Wherein each week we look around what we call the nation’s Upstates — those places just a bit removed from the center of things — to find illuminating news and intriguing viewpoints, which you might not otherwise see.

This week, we share reporting published here:

• Belmont, N.C. (Gaston Gazette, gastongazette.com)

• Aberdeen, S.D. (Aberdeen American-News, aberdeennews.com)

• Canandaigua, N.Y. (Daily Messenger, mpmnow.com)

• Peoria, Ill. (Peoria Journal Star, pjstar.com)

NOTE: The complete “Newsclips from the Upstates” section, and The Upstate American Midweek Extra Edition, which is sent to email boxes on some Wednesdays, are available only to paid subscribers. Thanks for your support!

NORTH CAROLINA

Citizens petition police to conduct search

The latest petition drive around Charlotte, N.C., involves the disappearance of a young man from the suburban community of Belmont. Kara Fohner reports in the Gaston Gazette that 1,100 people have signed a petition asking the Charlotte-Mecklenberg Police Department to search an Anson County landfill for the body of Andy Tench, 31, who went missing after going to a bar to celebrate his birthday three months ago. A man in police custody claims that he was with Tench when he died in late March and put his body in a dumpster. The contents of that dumpster are regularly deposited in the landfill, which is about two hours from Charlotte. Police are refusing to search the landfill, saying they have no evidence to corroborate the prisoner’s claim that he deposited Tench’s body in the dumpster. No other trace of Tench has been found.

SOUTH DAKOTA

This state is No. 1 in production of a crop that was only recently legalized

It’s not a populous state, nor a rich one, but South Dakota has achieved new distinction (beyond having a trigger-happy governor): It has gone from near-last to first place among the states in hemp production, according to reporting by Greta Goode of South Dakota News Watch, a not-for-profit newsroom. It was illegal to grow hemp in the United States from 1930 to 2018, and South Dakota waited until 2021 to legalize the plant. But since then, farmers have been introducing varieties from France and China, and have found that it thrives in a state that has lots of sunshine but, because it’s arid, not many insects to attack the plant. Different varieties of hemp produce three different products: CBD, fibers and grain and seed. Most of South Dakota’s production is used around the country for animal bedding and building materials (known as hempcrete).

NEW YORK

Gay flag football league is growing

The Buffalo Bills are the latest NFL team to announce sponsorship of a team in the National Gay Flag Football League (NGFFL), joining eight other teams in a show of support for inclusivity. Emily Barnes reports for New York’s Gannett newspapers that the league launched 22 years ago, and now has 4,000 players in 27 cities around the country.

ILLINOIS

City weighs whether to allow chickens (alive)

Peoria, a city of just over 100,000 in central Illinois, is surrounded by farmland, but it is just now gripped by controversy over a proposal to allow residents to keep chickens in their back yards. JJ Bullock reports in the Peoria Journal Star that the city council wants to take another 30 days to think about the issue, and that the city staff has been directed not to take any more action on the issue until a decision is reached. Opponents say they’re concerned about increasing the workload of code enforcement officers and finding animal shelter space for chickens that people decide they don’t want to keep (or, presumably, invite to the supper table). Supporters say that backyard chickens reduce food insecurity, strengthen neighborhood bonds and help build racial equity; some neighbors say they’re noisy and smelly. "I would love to be convinced that this is the cool and hip thing to do, and it is, but I am really concerned about the costs and the long-term implications that it is going to have in some of our heritage neighborhoods," said one council member.

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THANK YOU for reading The Upstate American, and for joining us in the conversation about *our common ground, this great country. I hope you’ll join us again next week — or send a message with ideas you’d like to see us address.

-REX SMITH