When, in a near future, marked by the devastation of democracy and other political ills, historians reflect on how the presidency of Trump, the doer of all wrongs, could have come about, they will have to return again and again to this very moment in which we now find ourselves. The research question will always be the same. How was it possible that the only ones who could have prevented it, the Democratic politicians, were unable to make Biden give up his candidacy? We are being given the opportunity to follow this event live, and we cannot say that we are less perplexed. The numbers speak for themselves, there is no poll that gives the president the slightest chance of victory; little by little the polls in each and every decisive state, the battleground states, The vote is increasingly leaning in Trump’s favour, and 75% of Americans think Biden is not fit to serve another term. And this last fact is the most important: in politics, appearances are reality, and there is no way to reverse this judgement, even if Biden were given a miracle potion and suddenly appeared full of life and lucidity.
Among other things, because no one is talking about Trump and his ramblings anymore, all the focus is on the elderly president. Trump, who is probably even less bright than Biden, only needs to control his language a little so as not to end up scaring away the undecided and not offend the elderly voters. Unless the Democratic candidate changes, the campaign is dead. It will be like a long series of tests of the intellectual capacity of the affected person, which the world public opinion will witness, both anguished and amused. It will be a shameful and cruel spectacle to which a politician of Biden’s career has no right to be subjected. But his entourage, especially his closest ones, wants it that way, and it is impossible not to raise the question about the reason for this attitude, this perseverance in sustaining the unsustainable. The conventional explanation, the eroticism of power, or whatever we want to call it, does not quite fit, there is no possible explanation for this torture, no one is so extremely masochistic. Even more so when the great spokesmen of the liberal press, The New York Timeseither The Washington Posthave already spoken out against it, or the establishmentfrom Hollywood — through George Clooney — and countless donors and party members. Those who denounce his incapacity are also his supposed supporters and friends.
Soon some book will appear that will explain to us what is happening from the perspective of the insiderBut it will be too late. For those of us who observe from the outside, the most tragic element is that, in effect, the president is no longer the master of his decisions. Someone with his political experience, in view of all the data that is coming out, cannot persist in this attitude, cannot wish for what is happening and what will almost inexorably end up happening; namely, handing power over to Trump without a fight and, on top of that, going down in history as the senile candidate who opened the doors to someone who will endanger American democracy. And if this hypothesis is true, that his deterioration prevents him from making rational decisions, the next question is no less terrifying: Who really governs the United States at this time? We will have to wait for those historians of the future to offer us the answers. Now we can only hope that sanity prevails and a new candidate is found as soon as possible.
