I will happily concede that Biden will never be an inspiring candidate—and his second-term agenda is at best vague. But fate has also decreed that our first octogenarian president is the last bulwark against Trumpian autocracy. That is why it is fine to argue about the future direction of the Democratic Party. But it is also why those debates over domestic and foreign policy should be put on hold until January 20, 2025. What matters more than anything is that the Constitution will still be there on January 20, 2029, with Biden in the White House.
Trump, with his domination of the sad remnants of the Republican Party, becomes only the fifth man since the Civil War to be nominated for president three times. (The others range from Franklin Roosevelt and Grover Cleveland to William Jennings Bryan and the inescapable Richard Nixon).
But, in a sense, it may be better this way. An abject, landslide defeat is the only way to remove the contagion that Trump represents from the American political system. And while the polls are currently daunting for Biden (and very premature), there is a possibility that a Trump conviction in the federal government’s January 6 case and his continued erratic behavior on the stump could make all the difference.