It's Up to Us

 

I spent the last few days putting off writing about the "Pass the Torch" movement. Oh, I was getting ready. I was going to sit down and take names and call out the fuckery. People didn't start one minute from the first question during the debate before I think the "drop Biden" movement started, in a way that felt coordinated and desperately shitty to me. 

Who the fuck treats a decent man who just gave us an astonishingly successful 3.5 years like this? Why are Democrats even airing our laundry in public? I'm a fan of transparency on one hand, but on the other it felt disrespectful to the man and his honorable public service. 

Every dumb horserace "Here's what a contested convention would look like" article, every "who might we see in a blitz primary?" thumbsucker, seemed to be a repudiation of the primaries we just had. 

The last straw wasn't the has-been campaign mahoffs of yesteryear who have displayed the political savvy of brain-damaged lemmings in the rush to shaft the incumbent Democratic president, though, that was going to make me bleed my frustration all over the internet--it was the distilled self-parody of Sorkinism: suggesting Democrats nominate Mitt Romney. 

Big "not The Onion" energy, but why did my eyes water? 

Because much as my feelings about Mitt Romney have moderated from 2012--he still isn't a Democrat, and it felt defeatist. One major party is captured by racist, violent authoritarianism, and the other is consigned to irrelevance and mere "Never Trumpism"?  Fuck that. 

Disgusted as I was by the way Biden has been pushed out, the writing was on the wall. Death by a thousand cuts, however small, take their toll. The question isn't the man's fitness for office (whatever bitter, bad-faith Republicans want to snipe about now) --he is still a decent, intelligent and capable man. It was about the fitness of the candidate--a different thing altogether. It was clear we were talking about "when."

Joe Biden has done one thing, in letting go, that demonstrates his public service in a way Trump never could. In all history, when would a twice-impeached and multiply-indicted, and even convicted candidate, have the gall to argue their fitness? And yet, how does a successful and beloved candidate step back?

Love of country. Service over self. It's the whole measure I see of the men before me. One gets it, one never could. 

I don't know this for a fact, and maybe it will be a while in the telling, but part of me thinks Biden held out despite the damage to himself personally, to exact the support that has coalesced around Vice-President Kamala Harris. She has had my support from the start, and with every endorsement she has received in this whirlwind of a day, I have felt something like a stone being taken off my chest. 

For me, my whole support now falls behind Kamala Devi Harris. And that means my energy, my love and my rage. 

It will be ugly out here for her, like Hillary Clinton but worse. The GOP started long ago with the misogyny and racism, but the test isn't what they are--we knew that about them. It's what we are. It's up to us to put the faith in her that Joe Biden has had and see the job of continuing democracy through.  Democracy isn't about one person, anyway. It's about us and up to us, and we will have to lift her up and repel the nonsense. 

We know the media isn't going to help. They still want a little race. Does old Joe Manchin, think there's some "takesies-backsies" on deciding he's an Independent? Why does RFK, Jr. think Biden bowing out means the batshit signal went up? Thanks, no. Marianne Williamson--read the room. Do right-wingers want to pretend indicted John Eastman is an expert on the 14th Amendment? And what the hell does her not having given birth have to do with anything? (Yes, whatever that is. None of our previous presidents ever gave birth. Some didn't even have kids. WTF?)

Yeah right. We don't have time for stupid. We aren't doing to speed date or 90-day fiancé some perfect generic white guy candidate. Our candidate is our successful, talented vice-president, a former US Senator and state Attorney General, a far more experienced politician than Trump and Vance combined.

And we better have her six and stay in formation. 

We will overcome.