Joe Biden of the day
Out of context: Reply #130
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- elahon9
Taken from the Facebooks:
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I’ve been supporting Joe Biden, but last night, watching the debate—if you can call it that—I came to deeply admire him. Here’s why:
I don’t know if you’ve ever been in an abusive relationship with someone who argues like Trump. I have. If you haven’t—lucky you!—you can’t imagine how excruciatingly difficult it is to hold your own when someone is coming at you with a barrage of lies and accusations, interrupting constantly, refusing to allow you space to respond. If you have been, you know how your brain tends to go to mush, every thought process shuts down, and it becomes hard to formulate a coherent sentence.
(And should you currently be in such a relationship, I urge you—Get out! If someone in your life has a personal style that reminds you of Trump, get them out of your life! Whether it’s a partner, a boss, a family member—nothing is worth it And if you can’t get out—get help!)
On top of this, Biden has a life-long stutter he has struggled with. Imagine the pressure—he can’t just walk off stage and say ‘this farce is over’, or it will look like Trump has driven him off the field. He can’t afford to fumble his words or stumble or look old and feeble. And he can’t respond to every outrageous lie and attack.
But Joe held his own. Time after time, he pulled back from the temptation to just attack back, or froth at the mouth and scream, and landed his punches. He made it clear—when Trump didn’t do so himself—that the current occupant of the White House is a desperate, out-of-control failure, that he has no plan and no capacity to govern.
He did, just once, tell him flatly to shut up.
Some of us would have been happy to see him land a solid punch in the face—but that probably wouldn’t have helped him, as satisfying as it might have been to watch. And it would have broken Covid-19 protocol.
At times, you could see Biden was struggling with strong emotion, as when Trump attacked his sons, sneered at Beau’s service in Iraq. If Trump is trying to dispel the stories of how he has called soldiers ‘losers’, he didn’t help himself in that moment.
Biden had to almost physically pull himself back from the temptation to retaliate and go after Trump’s corrupt brood of offspring, but he did it, and went back to talking about all of our families and the policies that could make life better. The strain showed—and I like that! I like that he has human feelings, and that he doesn’t hide them, but nonetheless exerts self-control. What a change that would be, to have someone like that in the White House!
Biden isn’t the great showman. He’s not superstar handsome. He’s not Mr. Charisma. Good! We’ve had four years of a psychopathic showman—can we please have an ordinary, decent human being who will get the job done?
Biden didn’t get much chance to talk about his policies, but he is running on the most progressive platform of any major party candidate, ever. He will listen to the science on Covid, and get us on track to weather the pandemic and re-open safely. He will expand health care and get us closer to the universal coverage many of us advocate. He will get us back in the Paris accords, and his plan to address climate change is a good one that Bernie Sanders helped to form.
He isn’t the Great Progressive Champion many of us would have liked—but we don’t need him to be that. We need to be that! And a big win for Biden/Harris, coupled with wins in the Senate, will boost every issue we care about.
Trump’s despicable performance won’t convince anyone undecided to vote for him. But that’s not his aim. His goal is to make us all so disgusted with the whole process that we throw up our hands and say, “I’m not going to bother to vote, I’m just going to stay home and vomit.”
In that, he could succeed. So don’t let him! Get us all out of this abusive relationship!
Registration deadlines are approaching—early voting has already begun. Too many times, of late, the election has come down to a few votes here, a few votes there. This is the time to make sure you are counted on the right side of history.
Register. Vote.
People’s lives depend on it. Maybe even yours.