C’mon Man

These are not easy times. Our archenemy is threatening nuclear war. Climate change is gifting us with increasingly devastating weather. The economy is, we are told, on the precipice of recession. Need I go on?

In times like these we need an appealing and effective leader. The Republicans are offering us anything but. What is the Democratic alternative? Well, it ain’t much better. This is not said very happily. It is only said very reluctantly. But any objective analysis of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris leads to no other conclusion.

Of course, “ain’t much better,” still means that they are better.  Just not by much. Looking back on what they both did this pasg week, one can only say, as President Joe would himself say, “C’mon man.”

Effective leadership is more than effective policy. Wish that this weren’t so, but in any system that chooses its leaders based on popularity, it can’t be expected that voters will study policy papers in order to make their decisions. In times of trouble, voters want someone to trust, someone who demonstrates strength and a firm grasp of reality, someone inspiring. Is this Biden and Harris? C’mon man.

This past week, during a speech touting one of his legislative accomplishments, Joe called out the name of and scanned the audience for a Congresswoman who had been helpful in this effort. The problem was that the Congresswoman was dead and had been for weeks. This is not the picture of a leader with a firm grasp on the world around him. C’mon man.

You can say that this is just a slip-up, and a minor one at that. That’s what the President’s Press Secretary tried to say when she explained it as being because the Congresswoman was “top of mind”, whatever that means. The supportive media explained it by simply saying that “everyone makes mistakes.” Can you imagine what the same media would have said if Trump had done the same thing?

Here’s what puts the lie to those explanations. Not many, if any who heard the President speak came away thinking primarily about the legislation that Biden was crowing about. All that mattered was his gaffe. That is not the stuff of a minor mistake by a President of the United States to whom we have to look in a time of trouble.

And what of Kamala (as if it matters). It could just as easily be asked, “who is Kamala?” But she is the Vice-President and so what she does actually makes a difference.  What she did this week was a beauty. While visiting the border between North and South Korea, she declared that North, not South Korea was our ally. Again, of course this was a slip of the tongue but, again, it is precisely these types of mistakes that present a flawed view of Joe and Kamala as leaders and consequently feed the opposition. 

Even FOX’s right-wing utterly unfunny “satirist”, Greg Gutfeld, was able to successfully make fun of these blunders. If you have ever seen Greg Gutfeld, you know that such a thing is a good measure of hitting rock bottom.

Is all of this too harsh? Maybe. But it is essential, if not existential, that the Republicans be rebuffed. If you think that Biden and Harris are really the leaders who can do that for us – the leaders that the country is yearning for, well, C’mon man!