Why I Won't be Voting for Joe Biden

Note: this is an essay I posted on Facebook in June 2024, the day after the infamous debate implosion by Joe Biden. I’m posting it here for posterity’s sake. You’ll find it referenced in this new piece.

I don’t think it will surprise anyone here who has been a Facebook friend of mine for a while to hear that I was once a pretty dedicated Democrat. I worked for the party in multiple instances after all, and have voted D in every election since I became old enough to vote. I’ve written before about my proud heritage as an “Obamacrat”, coming of age during his first presidential election. You can see in this picture a younger, much less bearded me as a Democratic Party delegate at the state party convention in 2013; a few months after this, I would be hired as Executive Director of the Sedgwick Country Democratic Party in Kansas. Which is to say: I was very much a Democrat through and through.

cringe

It’s also no surprise to anyone who has paid attention that I have become pretty politically disenchanted over the last eight years or so. Last night was really a good showcase of why I have left the Party. I voted for Joe Biden in 2020 with a couple of things in mind: first, he was far from my first choice. I voted for Elizabeth Warren in the primary, and there were 4-5 other candidates I would have supported before Biden. Second, I felt (and feel) that Donald Trump is a uniquely dangerous threat to American democratic and constitutional norms, and someone with his level of shamelessness, egomaniacism, and complete commitment to bullshit over anything resembling the truth doesn’t belong anywhere near the White House, and thus, I was going to vote for whoever would be the candidate running against him as a vote in favor of removing his particular brand of political and cultural cancer from our body politic. And third, with that in mind, I cast a vote for Joe Biden with the understanding that he had signaled to his campaign apparatus, to the Party, and to the American voters that he was going to serve a single term as president, that he was a “bridge candidate,” brought in to defeat Trump and move us into a new era, which would come with an open primary in 2024. We were told that he understood that he was elected in 2020 despite his age, and that he would take seriously the concerns of voters over having an octogenarian in office long term.

Last night showed what I have felt for a long time now: Joe Biden is no longer fit to run for or be President of the United States. He is now 81 years old, will be 82 on Election Day, and if re-elected, 86 when he leaves office. The odds of him living that long are slim. The odds of him retaining all of his mental and physical faculties that long is even slimmer. The trust the public has in him is in tatters, and the last of it was torn away last night. He should step aside, immediately, and let the Party make a decision between now and the convention later this summer.

None of this is to say that Biden has been a bad president up to this point. Far from it. History would look very, very well on him if he stepped aside and rested on the laurels of his four years in office. Despite the claims of almost everyone on the right, he has a series of legislative and administrative achievements that are substantial and real. He has governed us through the aftermath of a pandemic, a coup attempt, inflationary pressures, and at least two significant international conflicts, and has done so steadily and successfully.

But, none of that excuses him today. Being president is about more than just policies and legislation. Being president is as much a PR job as anything else; it is in large measure an exercise in projecting confidence and competency as it is in actually possessing those things. He can no longer project those images. He looks what he is: an old, old, old man. He may not be senile or anything; in fact, I think he isn’t. But he’s just too old to be running the largest and most powerful nation on earth in the midst of several crises, and doing so in a way that makes Americans – and people all over the world – feel like someone has a steady hand on the wheel.

And, in saying this, I want to express my very clear anger and disgust with the Party I was once a proud and active member of. For four years now, voters have been telling them time and time again that we are not ok with Biden’s age and his future prospects, that we were tolerating him as a bulwark against Trumpism. And they have consistently not just ignored, but handwaved those concerns away, telling us we are wrong, or ageist, or misguided for feeling that way. Instead of listening to us, the rank and file who make up the Party, they have ignored us and tried to lead us like sheep to slaughter, all for some weird and misguided fealty to Joe Biden’s reelection, as if not offending him by telling him the truth is more important than doing to right thing. It’s disgusting and I’m absolutely ashamed by my Party.

Now, let me be absolutely clear about something: NONE OF THIS is an endorsement for voting for Donald Trump. Absolutely not. He is clearly still a danger to our nation, simply by dint of the fact that he has no regard for anything, anyone, or any idea outside of himself and his own immediate self-interest. He is willing to stoop to any low and court the very worst people with the very worst ideas in order to gain power and strive for the fleeting affirmation he dearly dearly wants. He is a broken and damaged human being, one who should not be President. I am especially offended every single damn day by him and his Party’s naked appropriation of Christianity and its language and ideas in pursuit of power and money, and their lack of hesitancy to twist the words of the Prince of Peace to support violence and bigotry and hatred. It is blasphemy of the very worst kind, and any sane Christian should view it as completing disqualifying of their vote to support such a man and a party.

This is point I’ve been making for a few months now in private, and which I will be making quite publicly the rest of this year: we don’t have to acquiesce to these two choices. We don’t have to accept Biden v. Trump as the choice. Yes, one of those two is almost certainly going to win (probably Trump, looking at the averages.) But, we do not have to be complicit in it. We can withhold our vote, vote third party or write-in or leave it blank. We do not have to and in fact have a moral and ethical obligation to wield our vote in a virtuous and value-driven way. For me, that means I won’t be voting for either candidate. Some will want to accuse me of facilitating a Trump win by doing this. But I’m not. I’m advocating that we all have the character and the integrity to stand up for our beliefs, and to exercise the power we have in a democracy not just in favor of one candidate or another (the only power that the Parties want us to believe we have) and instead wield it in protest against them. If more of us did just that – if we voted not just with our eyes on this next election, but with our eyes further down the road- we’d get their attention. Even if and when we get Trump or Biden this year, if they got into the office with a significant portion of the election refusing the choice, stripping them of political capital, then we would be laying the groundwork for a better democratic future. We would be playing a longer game that isn’t treating 2024 like it’s the last American election ever, but instead as another in a long line of elections and campaigns that have taught us, the voters, that we have the power, and we know how to exercise it. They can have the Oval Office, but they don’t also get our minds and our souls.

I’ll echo so many national voices I’m seeing today: Joe Biden, please stand down. Thank for for your service. You have earned your rest. Now let us move on.