The State of the Election

I am very distressed at the present condition of the election. I thought that Kamala would by this time be far ahead, the character of Trump having revealed himself, just the other day by admiring Arnold Palmer's penis. He is a clown but Kamala rightly says that Trump is an unserious person who could bring about very serious consequences. My late wife reminded me that my predictions were largely based on hope rather than data or analysis and so what I say should be discounted. My daughter-in-law says that one party or the other will be very angry at the outcome, but that is not my feeling. If Kamala wins, I will be relieved, I think, rather than elated. If Trump wins, I will despair over whether the constitutional measures are available to control his worst instincts, which is to cede a lot of Ukraine to Putin, put eleven million people in detention camps and then deport them, and get revenge against his enemies, which include Pelosi and Schiff as bad people who are part of the enemy within. Sixty-one percent of veterans will vote for Trump even though Trump admires Hitler. What is going on?

Let’s put aside the issues. Kamala wants capital gains taxes lower than Biden did. She wants substantial tax breaks for home ownership, children and new businesses. Conservatives can support those proposals because they reduce taxes and Liberals can support them as a way to provide more entitlements to people. Yes, Kamala could have campaigned against the “Do Nothing” Republican Congress, as Harry Truman had done in 1948, but never mind. The only point of difference in the election is the character of Trump versus the constitutionalism of Harris and that is by now well established even  though some people think Trump is a flawed vessel who will further their own agenda, much of which seems to me indefensible. These differences are clear. So, less than two weeks before the election, what has to be said has been said. Everyone should go out to vote and let us be done with it. 

My daughter said to me many years ago that politics was character, and that applied to the electorate and not just the candidates. My point was that the qualities of a person’s politics, whether they are mean or niggardly to the poor, or care only for their own financial benefits, or are statesmanlike, was an expression of their innermost natures. But I don’t want to believe that because it would mean half of the  present electorate are tainted in their souls. Better to think they have been caught up in a frenzy induced by culture, which rapidly changes, and so will just pass, as Trump said would happen in the spring of 2020, at Easter time. But it takes work rather than wishes to lift the malaise. 

Ezra Klein in the New York Times says that Trump’s disinhibition makes him attractive. To some extent, people like him mean when some voters are too timid to be so outrageous. But I disagree. Think of what is the content of what he says. Do people disregard that? They just agree with the anger. These people may think you need a mean person during mean times and so a strong man will make the nation free. But crime is down and the economy is up and the nation needs the immigrants to keep the economy going. So anger is an end in itself, not for a purpose. It seems that there has been a sea change in that a lot of people do not want the President to be Henry Fonda or Jed Bartlett: cool under pressure, very well informed, humane. They want the opposite. That may mean Trumpism will outlast Trump, some other potential dictator arising, and that is very disheartening, that meanness, not disinhibition, the real thing. 

What might it be that could control Trump if he were elected? The 25th Amendment or a conviction by the Senate of an impeachment? Congressional Republicans have not been a bulwark of democracy, cowering instead because of their contributors and local party officials and their base, the Cheneys notable exceptions, but note that neither of the two have elective office, nor do some Republican ex-congresspeople and loads of ex Trump officials who have defected from Trump.  And as for the Supreme Court? All the male justices are corrupt. Alito and Thomas get millions of dollars worth of perks from interested donors who have business at the Court and sometimes report these and sometimes don’t and are both into far right points of view and so in Trump’s pocket. Roberts refuses to impose any ethical standards with any bite. Gorsuch and Kavenaugh told Senators during the time of their confirmations that Roe v. Wade was “settled law” and did not add that they would overrule it anyway. That is hardly the honorable behavior expected of a Supreme Court Justice. 

So the anti-democratic forces have been mobilizing for quite some time and can be attributed as far back as Gingrich who tried to make the Republicans something other than the me too party which for many years acquiesced to Democratic initiatives but just slowly. And at this juncture, one might expect there to be rioting of the streets by either side while in the moment of what used to be called a revolutionary moment as preceded the French Revolution or even the easily pacified Vietnam War protests. But people like me are amazed that what we anti insurrectionists do is follow out the formalities of democratic institutionalism for as long as that lasts, hoping that Kamala will win and that Trump would be restrained, nothing premature to be done. This may be the most important election since 1860, but let the other side fire on Fort Sumter.

My son says that I shouldn't worry because the election won't affect my life. I will have my Social Security and my streaming services and Amazon and my friends and family. But I have followed politics for three quarters of a century and care about it and can't give it up, the way I did with baseball when Derek Jeter retired and management knew that A Rod was on steroids. My daughter tries to just cultivate her garden but has become obsessed as well with the  election. My granddaughter is spoiling for an argument about how disgraceful Trump is. I guess I should be an Olympian and notice how foolish mere mortals might be and so let the election be noted as a possible upheaval that in history can occasionally come to nations, but I cannot disengage because this is in my time and in my place. I cannot just note that I am fortunate to live in interesting times. But my options are few. I vote and exercise my voice by writing and I can allow myself to feel dispirited.

The Presidential Campaign Now

Are voters reliable judges of character?

This is the dirtiest and meanest Presidential campaign in my lifetime. Worse than the Willie Horton ad leveled by George W. H. Bush against Michael Dukakis in 1988 where antiblack feeling was drummed up because Dukakis as governor of Massachusetts had left on parole a convict who reoffended. Just one and tube first Bush must have held his nose about what he was convinced to do. Not Lyndon Johnson unleashing the daisy petals ad and invoking nuclear war if Goldwater was elected in 1964, and a declaration by psychiatrists that Goldwatger was mentally unstable. Just  a few attacks, the petals had withdrawn after it was aired after only one time. Nor even Richard Nixon, who had associated his California campaigns with slanders on opponents being Communist tainted, presenting the checkers speech in 1952 to counter his having a slush fund, by clothing his wife in a Republican cloth coat and a refusal to give back the dog checkers that his daughters loved, himself clothed in Republican conventional respectability. This time is much worse. J. D. Vance says that it is alright to make up and repeat stories about migrants who happen to be legal but black as eating pets so as to show just how awful illegal immigration is. And a trump close supporter saying the white house would smell like curry if Kamala was elected and that Jews would be responsible if Israel was destroyed if Harris was elected, greatly exaggerating the two to three percent of Jewish American voters and American Jews in high places scrupulously and easily holding their allegiance to the United States even if having sentimental associations with Israel. When John McCain jousted with Barack Obama neither suggested the other was a threat to democracy and both current candidates charge that, one of them unfortunately true, the election an existential threat to America for the first time since 1860.

Even less combustible issues are discouraging. The Democratic Primary candidates in 2020, Harris, Sanders and Warren, were to the left of Joe Biden. Now, Harris is to the right of Biden, though not by very much, the best example of that in Harrfis wanting to raise capital income taxes by a little, less than what Biden has proposed. Trump was in favor of reversing Roe v. Wade and said so proudly but is now backpedaling because the issue is inflaming women. Not even the appearance of principle, just as his preferring a border issue rather than a border solution, as he said so overtly to Republican Senators who scuttled a border bill at his behest.This year found, this year as a whole, anti-Israel cohorts tinged with antisemitism has become prevalent and not only on campuses. The White House press corps displays some of that. A correspondent at a meeting asks whether their own beepers (which they probably don’t have as they are antiquated) asks if their cell phones will blow up. Jean Pierre, perhaps because of her discretion as press secretary does not quip as I would, “Not unless you got your instrument from Hezbellah which was a weapon of war sent  to underlings so as to communicate about planned battle action, and therefore liable to enemy intervention so as to disrupt military communications. Why were parents giving weapons of war to their children?

There is an asymmetry between the parties. Democrats don't castigate one another while Republicans say just awful things about one another. The worst Democratic candidates say is minor. Harris criticized Biden on bussing however much she misrepresented his position which was that local districts were free to allow bussing, and that is what happened when Harris was bussed as a child in Berkeley. Obama used his irony and wit to say of Hillary that she was “appealing  enough”. So Biden made up with Harris and made her Vice President and Hillary supported Obama with good conscience. Republican candidates go  for the jugular, as when George H. W. Bush as a candidate called Reagan’s economic policy “voodoo economics” and Vance said Trump was like Hitler. Those shouldn’t be passed off as words that become meaningless when the campaign is over for they lead to a cynical view that nothing politicians say can be taken seriously. Bush just allowed himself to be angry and say his words were only then once he became the Vice Presidential nominee and Vance says he learned to favor trump because of his administration as president though, obviously, being hitler is a  character trait that doesn’t go away even  if good administration follows unless he is a very bad judge of character, which is also a weighty  matter for someone running for very high office.

The columnists are all wondering under the guise of what they think the candidates should do is what they think the voters will do. What will motivate Harris or Trump to clinch the deal? What will Harris say to show is her purpose as president rather than just an alternative to Trump? Voters want more than that. But I disagree.The real question I ask is why that choice is not obvious. Whatever Harfris’s shortcomings, whether she flip flops or is not specific on policy, she is not a mean spirited insurrectionist who would sell America to the highest bidder and is afraid to confront any of America’s adversaries, he someone less likely to drop the bomb than to cave in at any treaty.

Consider the current events which make Harris a clear choice. The Biden Administration has been dealing with two major developments in the past few days and has been handling them professionally: they are providing hurricane assistance to the southeast United States and using the American military to assist Iranian missiles against Israel. American leaders are well informed and coordinating with one another and with their allies, saying very little about planks forward, which should be their posture, but as accurate as possible as the facts as they know them. That is  how a responsible government operates and by and large has operated in most Democratic and Republican administrations, sober rather than bellicose, measured rather than precipitous. And what does Trump do? He lied that Biden had not spoken to the Republican Governor of Georgia who himself said that Biden had given Georgia whatever he wanted. Trump lied about covid and recently about pets eaten in Springfield, Ohio, though that a President telling the truth to the American people is a sacred trust even if some information can be withheld. Will you trust Trump should he be elected to tell the people the truth about anything, significant, like a war, or trivial, like his crowd sizes? How can anyone take the position otherwise than that of the NY Times editorial board which is that in this case a patriot can only vote for Harris? And yet the polls remain surprisingly close, as if people disregard Trump as an insurrectionist or all the indictments against him . Why? Do people have no respect for the constitution or simple individual morality whereby we deplore liars and those who disdain the military?

And then, that night, there was the Vice Presidential debate. Vance “won” because he presented himself as more articulate than Walz, who opened with hems and haws rather than getting to the point directly, and also as a reasonable and compassionate person rather than the ogre and extremist preoccupied with punishing cat ladies by reducing the power of their votes. He did so by being mild mannered, family oriented, and engaging in the technicalities of legislation, as if people cared about such things, knowing that arguments could be made on all sides for an audience unfamiliar with the issues. So much for everybody wanting a policy debate when  clearly people prefer the personality debate that was present in the Harris Trump debate where everyone could assess the characters of the people running for President. Also, to achieve his ends, Vance just lied or obscured a number of issues as that was quickly ;pointed out by the commentators on CNN  who clearly prefer Harris. Vance said that he wanted to provide child benefits rather than defend his opposition to abortion. He also said that Trump saved Obamacare when he had in fact tried to overturn it. Vance also said that Trump had turned over power on Jan. 20th neglecting that he tried to overthrow the government on Jan 6th while also himself asking Georgia votes to give him the statue and in  cahoots with those engaged in drafting fake electors to gum  up the electoral process. Some of those actions are under indictment but trials are delayed at the behest of the president who, if he thought himself innocent, would move them quickly to clear his name. But the greatest failure of the debate was that the CBS moderator  put in  the question of Jan. 6th late in the debate rather than making it front and center because that is the central issue about whether Trump is suitable for high office rather than just one of a long set of issues worth debating. Insurrection is not just another item.

And this is happening while the United States is heavily engaged, though without ground troops, in two wars and abortion and the peaceful succession of power are mighty issues for the American people to deal with and debates just skirt around them. In the old days, when people were ideological or interest based, that is what candidates talked about: getting out of Korea or civil rights or welfare for the poor. Sometimes I prefer the old days so the media discussed the issues rather than personalities. But personality is what it is and the media do dig deeply into that rather than just the puff their supporters present. But I am unsure whether the American people are even up to judging character rather than policy. If they were, Harris would win in a landslide.

The Trump-Harris Debate

It is still a horserace.

The bottom line on the debate is that it is contentless even if consequential. Famously, in the first televised presidential debate, radio listeners thought Nixon “won”, whatever that means other than making some memorable pointed remarks lacking in  the opponent, while Kennedy was thought by the public to win maybe because of his teeth and smile while Nixon had five o'clock shadow. The debates contest appearances and so people decide they disdain Kamala’s laugh because that has become a Republican talking point. Moreover, we know alot about the candidates. Trump is mean and gruff and garbled and accept or like that for him, a strong man who voters may not have the gumption to express themselves while Kamala is a centrist left Democrat who moved more centrist this time than she was four years ago when the general rhetoric was more leftist even though Biden’s definitely New Deal leanings, pure FDR, was successful economically and overcame Covid. Saying the economy is the real issue is just a way of offering a respectable reason  for liking the Trump style. So why bother having the debate at all?

Well, the debate could provide dramatic surprises and that is what it delivered. And so the debate should satisfy as the real deal the broadcast and cablecast news organizations were hawking for a week now.Trump had to meet a low bar. All he had to do was sound coherent and a bit less mean while Harris, the old prosecutor, had to nail him on the wall to seem victorious. When I saw the debate, I decided that Harris began nervous but settled down and was fine at delivering her impassioned speech on abortion, but she failed to deny Trump’s charge that immigrants were being loosed from prisons and insane asylums, perhaps because so she would not seem to be protecting or defending undocumented aliens. In my view, the debate came down to being parallel stump speeches, each one offering their own slogans and myself amazed that Trump just goes on lying, like immigrants eating house pets. It was a largely useless exercise, I thought, that wouldn’t switch voters. People like the patter of the one they support.

But CNN  commentators thought differently, that Harris clobbered Trump, baiting him into saying stupid and racist remarks or having no answer to why he hasn’t offered a plan to replace Obamacare for the many years since Obama proposed it. The Times thought Trump was made small while Kamala went high. But if you discount his lies, Kamala doesn’t win by exposing them and, following J. D. Vance, it doesn’t matter if Haitians are eating cats, only that immigrants are disrupting American life. What still matters is comparing cheerfulness to meanness, and that is up to the voters. PBS,  the NY Times and the New Yorker mostly said the same thing. 

My take was different. Trying to expand the MAGAS would probably lose but  in a close thing. Trump was baited into saying what Harris wanted him to say, but Trump said what he wanted to say anyway: to be mean and vague and full of lies. His supporters want him to say these things even if MAGA commentators want him to dwell on issues. Why should he? He wins for his followers even if it loses the undecided, that very small figure who actually have not made up their minds about the differences. Trump has to gain more MAGAS to show up to vote, not win the undecided. In that case, he would probably lose but in a close vote. For Harris to really have a resounding victory, to win substantial numbers of MAGAS to her side, she would have required shaming him or getting him to stumble, which he did not do. He told his lies and exaggerations and did not linger on his self praise and grievances and so did not hurt himself unless people were ready to give up on him. The article yesterday in the NY Times by Peters, Healy and Robertson got it right, I think,  were close to the mark by pointing out that undecideds remained undecided which meant, to me, that uninformed people, and especially MAGAS, would vote for Trump whatever the debate results.

A debate is like a stage play and not just because it has revealing dialogue that is constrained in time and space, and in this case, as I claim, where the two sides were talking past one another. It is also dramatic because the audience makes sense of the drama, what is to be taken from the dialogue or excuse for one, out of the content and the exchanges. Playwrights improve a project by trying out audiences as to what makes an impact and will change a play so that it will resonate with real playgoers so that what happens on the strange is not elusive or obscure. They have to get it. Voters are even  less discerning playgoers. They are not schooled in political science or even standard historical references or particularly verbally astute. They just dip in late in the election year into politics and are expected to make a judgment on the candidates even though focus group members just after the debate the other night had difficulty articulating why they liked or didn‘t like one or the other candidate. The voters are amateurs with only passing interest in the subject matter and their specialized languages but they are supposed to be the wisdom of the Republic. Well, not really. People get to vote not because of their education or investment in the nation or even just because voting is an alternative to civil unrest. It is a procedure for transferring power and the Founding Fathers thought that a republic required only that a populace was virtuous, which meant that it could make obvious distinctions between right and wrong. The present election is obvious and we hope the Founding Fathers were right and the American people remain virtuous.

The Biden Withdrawal

Three incumbent Presidents in my lifetime decided not to run for another term, and they did so because they couldn't get reelected, however much Biden may be praised for doing the patriotic thing, which was also the truth.  Harry Truman said he wouldn't run in 1952 because he couldn't get a good enough deal to end the Korean War and because McCarthyite accusations against him had hurt him. Eisenhower had a clean slate. He took the available deal on Korea and bided his time to finish off McCarthy. LBJ declined to run because he could not get a negotiated settlement with North Vietnam and because Eugene McCarthy had nearly beaten LBJ in the New Hampshire Democratic Primary. Biden had to resign the nomination even though the polls with Trump remained close because he was told the polls were bad in the swing states and that the Democratic donors had dried up.

Moreover, there is plenty of time to shift to Kamala as leader. Remember that the entire British election season lasts just six weeks from the time the election is called until it is decided and Kamala will continue Biden's policies both foreign and domestic and can face Trump on the issues of abortion,and Ukraine in a lively manner, asking Trump in  a debate why Trump never criticizes Putin and that Trump is responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade. 

Another thought. Harris' vp nominee will have to be a white male so as to balance the ticket. even though the obvious choice would be someone from a battleground state, which means Wisconsin , Michigan or Pennsylvania. Gov. Evers of Wisconsin is just not mentioned as a heavy hitter. That leaves out Gov. Whitmer of Michigan and Sen. Klobuchar of Minnisota, but not Gov. Newsom of California. He is a heavy hitter but might be willing to take the job because, as the expression goes, it puts him one heartbeat away from the Presidency. LBJ made the same decision and not just to get Texas' electoral votes, though Sam Rayburn mentioned it as did JFK. The trouble with Gov. Shapiro of Pennsylvania is that it would make the Harris-Shapiro ticket too Jewish. Under Kamala, the spouse of the President would be Jewish. Harris's step-daughters refer to her as "mamala". That nearly happened once before because the wife of Michael Dukakis was Jewish and people asked her if she would put up the White House Christmas tree and she said she would. Harris's step-daughters refer to her as "mamala". So no Shapiro as vp. Sen. Mark Kelley of Arizona seems a good choice.

Biden Bounces Back

But his nomination isn’t secure.

American voters will have to engage in a bit of discernment in choosing which nominee to decide to be President in November. In the past, they could vote on relative charm or whether the economy was doing well, knowing that whomever was elected would have been a responsible President and so not a crucial choice. But not this time.

If Biden had flubbed yesterday during his post NATO Summit Meeting press conference the way he had in his debate with Trump and his interview with George Steponopolis, then Nancy Pelosi and some other senior Democrats could have had the distasteful duty of  going to the White House and telling Biden that he could no longer do the job and give way to either Kamala Harris or a short list of articulate, vigorous and well experienced Governors for the Chicago delegates to choose as standard bearer. But that is not what happened. Biden was strong in offering a comprehensive view of foreign policy. He explained the reason for and accomplishment of a strong NATO to fend off the America Firsters who had not infiltrated into the Republican Party since Pearl Harbor, pointing out that internationalism included both Ronald Rdeagan and himself. He turned a question of whether he was able to negotiate with foreign leaders into describing that he had restored talks with China and that at the moment there was nothing to talk about with Putin who is not willing to budge on his war aims against Ukraine despite the very high casualties to Russia and a loss of land in Ukraine controlled by Russia. Biden also mentioned that he had strengthened the Pacific Rim allies and so was controlling China and  economically punishing Chinese cooperation with Russia.Biden also said that managing Israel was difficult because it had the most conservative  government it had, his own involvement going back to the time of Golda Meir. Biden also managed to point out that at home  employment was up and inflation down and illegal immigration seriously lessened because of his own executive orders. Quite a good performance.

But here is where the discernment comes in. Biden’s voice is weak. He sometimes has to wait a few seconds to recover a word he is looking for, something familiar to myself during advanced age. He sometimes garbles his words or stutters. He is clearly an old man and so need to notice that his knowledge of the facts and ideas remain clear and decisive. He knows what he thinks, has thought through the issues, rather than offering canned statements. Don’t worry about  teleprompters that are used by both candidates. He is an active and acute observer of what is going on and people should notice that if they put aside his  elderly mannerisms. 

The media will over the next four months have a lot of influence in helping the voters to discern what is the differences between reality and appearance, not something required in past elections where voters could choose differences between policy, character or party affiliation. Will the media dwell on Biden’s verbal lapses or attend to the fact that he knows what he is talking about? That could make the difference. An even greater challenge to the media is how to handle Trump, whose test begins soon enough this coming Monday at the Republican Convention in Milwaukee. Commentators have already taken the role of fact checking Trump but will they do it aggressively enough tyo show he lies all the time about anything and that what he says are assertions rather than evidence or arguments, which seems a mental failure of his that goes very far back and so is not the result of aging.

The most important questions to face Trump or his spokespeople starting now is why he has never provided evidence of a rigged election, or why he hid and lied about secret documents and what right he had to ask Georgia to give him the votes needed for him to win the vote in the stage. He and they can claim Trump can’t say because these matters are in the courts, but that doesn’t wash. He is offering himself to be President of the United States not just in jeopardy of being a jailbird.  He can be asked to meet a higher standard, that of public opinion. Ask on the Sunday programs why there are no explanations of these various issues and why is he delaying the process for possibly exonerating himself? The ball is in his court and evading the issues makes him seem guilty, which is reason enough not to vote for him, as well as for his general demeanor of meanness and his plans to overthrow democracy. Commentators may be willing to discuss the 2025 Project but find it distasteful to deal with Trump’s personal character, every president, like Richard Nixon, given a clean shave for his past character once assuming President because it is so distasteful to deal with negative personal qualities. Bjut why shouldn’t they ask? Newspapermen looked into Gary Hart’s personal life and undid  him  as a candidate. Why not ask why revenge isn’t always a bad thing or that diminishing an opponent’s stature by remarking on his small hands or his wife’s appearance diminishes himself rather than the people he tries to belittle. Media people will have to wade into personalities when they try to avoid thinking verbal flubs are evidence but smearing is beneath their dignity when it is the most obvious evidence before them.

We will see next week how the media handle Trump. That could be decisive.

What Democrats Should Do

Biden should pass the torch.

The debate last Thursday was not as awful for Biden as it was perceived because the commentators dealt with Biden’s weak delivery rather than the lies offered and the revenge promised by Trump. the commentators did not deal with the essence which was that, rather than the shitshow predicted, the two contestants made clear what they believed: that the other one was the worst president ever and a liar and sending America to ruin. That clarified things and the electorate can decide which one is correct. More cynical people I know just think that they are both a disgrace, while I think that Biden, even though he has a weaker voice, was correct on the issues and his own propriety.  If Biden wins, the worst that can happen if he becomes a figurehead President, just like George W. Bush. Biden would continue his policies and points of view backed by a strong cabinet while a Trump victory is a disaster for the Constitution. People will see that out-- or so I think.

But people have acted differently and many now seen Biden as unequipped to be President because of his infirmities rather than his wise and agile management of government given the divided populace and organs of government while treating Trump’s bluster as not really meaning what he says, which is to create internment camps for millions of people, get revenge against his political enemies by politicizing the Justice Department and making most civil servants into political decisions an d to replace taxes with tariffs, which would lead  to a Great Depression. What can be done to stop Trump? An interview with George Srephanopolis is not likely to restore Biden’s support and important Democratic leaders as well as media leaders think it time to make a turn. Movement is occurring quickly as was the case when England considered  a surrender to Hitler at the time of Duunkirk and I do not exaggerate the menace a second term for Trump would be to the American Constitution.

I suggest the following plan. The leading Democrats would orchestrate a pageant at the Chicago Convention next month when, Biden having announced he will not run, three or four likely contenders, such as Harris, Klobuchar, Newsome and Whitmer, will present speeches saying that Biden has gone far but like Moses will not enter the promised land but will continue his policies in his name and then  the delegates will jostle with one another about which one will be the standard bearer. (I eliminate Buttigig because Trump will make gayness the issue, but then again, I didn’t think Obama would get elected in 2008 because he was Black. So I could be wrong and Mayor Pete has proven himself an excellent cabinet secretary, having mastered the intricacies of transportation, which are considerable.) Biden might agree with this plan to have an exit with glory, deified while still alive. When Hubert Humphrey, having been defeated by Nixon, returned to the Senate and soon found out to have terminal cancer, he received many tributes from his colleagues about his accomplishments. Rather than thinking this morbid, Humphrey said he loved it. Politicians are like opera singers. They love applause.

There would also be advantages to the nation. Remember that Lyndon Johnson got large majorities in Congress in the 1964 election because of the assassination of John F. Kennedy the previous year. That allowed Johnson to pass major civil rights legislation. A similar tribute to Biden as the person worn down from his long political endeavors might give the Democrats enough election wins that they could pass civil rights and voting rights bills as well as legislation on the border, the electorate a bit guilty at  heaving Biden out now that he was ousted. Such is the nature of popular political feeling. At least we will be rid of Trump and can hope that the Republicans can return themselves into being a conservative rather than  Populist party. That may be wishing too much, but the future can be formed through good wishes rather than dire forebodings.