The Cop Against the Criminal

Jonathan Chait: “It took 24 days from President Biden’s befuddled debate performance to persuade him to surrender the job he’s been working toward for more than five decades. It may have felt like months, but history will record that the Democratic Party made a dramatic course correction in rapid time.”

“The Democrats had been drifting slowly toward disaster for two years, paralyzed by an inability to organize an alternative to Biden, whose abilities had obviously declined since his election (when he was a slower but still-recognizable version of his vice-presidential persona).”

“Gleeful Republicans seized upon the dysfunction, which seemed to mitigate the humiliation they felt over Donald Trump’s takeover of their party. You see, they sneered, we are not so different after all. Republicans were not alone in their helplessness.”

“But the Democrats, contrary to Will Rogers’s famous quip, turn out to be an organized political party, after all. And Biden turns out to be a very different man from Trump — not only in his respect for democratic norms and basic human decency but in his willingness to subsume his personal goals for the greater good.“