President Biden keeps recommitting to running in 2024, but his running mate would be better positioned to save our democracy

It crush­es me to admit that Pres­i­dent Biden can’t sprint to the cam­paign fin­ish line.

He took a knock-out punch on that debate stage – a self-inflict­ed knock-out punch, the worst kind. In cam­paign lan­guage, we call that a seri­ous unforced error. 

Unforced errors don’t have to be fatal. Recov­ery depends on the can­di­date and cam­paign strate­gists: own it, reas­sure your core base of sup­port­ers, get back in the cam­paign and fight like hell to cross the fin­ish line first. 

Gov­ern­ing is a marathon. Cam­paign­ing is not. Every moment in a cam­paign matters. 

No one want­ed Fight­in’ Joe to get back in the race more than me. 

He’s The War­rior. Walk­er, Texas Ranger. The Red Sox play­ing the Yan­kees in the 2004 Amer­i­can League Cham­pi­onship Series.

Joe Biden’s whole life and polit­i­cal career have epit­o­mized every­thing that Win­ston Churchill meant when he said “Nev­er, nev­er, nev­er give in.”

Our lives are a marathon. But a cam­paign is a sprint.

Since the debate revealed a hes­i­tant can­di­date Joe Biden, shuf­fling to the podi­um and strug­gling to keep up with the ques­tions, we’ve been drown­ing in the aftermath. 

His post-debate recov­ery strat­e­gy has failed (assum­ing there even was a strat­e­gy), mas­sive­ly dis­rupt­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty pol­i­tics just weeks before the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion in Chica­go, unleash­ing social media and cable tele­vi­sion pira­nhas, and leav­ing Amer­i­can vot­ers con­cerned about his capabilities. 

Biden has lost the tough­est fight in pol­i­tics. He can’t pick him­self up and get back in the race for the Pres­i­den­cy. He can’t fin­ish the cam­paign sprint.

What our democ­ra­cy needs now is a can­di­date who can sprint to the fin­ish line and crush Don­ald Trump, a man who hates the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca and has been giv­en a green light to com­mit crimes against the peo­ple and our Con­sti­tu­tion with impuni­ty by the right wing Alito/Roberts Court, should he be returned to pow­er via the Elec­toral College. 

We the peo­ple have nev­er giv­en Don­ald Trump our sup­port in the pop­u­lar vote for the pres­i­den­cy. I choose to have con­fi­dence in the Amer­i­can vot­ers to get back up and do it again: deny Don­ald Trump the pop­u­lar vote, deny him the Elec­toral Col­lege, and pull off a clas­sic Amer­i­can vic­to­ry for our democracy. 

The will of the peo­ple is to pre­serve, pro­tect, and defend the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Unit­ed States where gov­ern­ment of, by, and for the peo­ple endures. 

Some­times, his­to­ry gives us just a moment in time to rec­og­nize that what our democ­ra­cy need­ed four years ago was this man, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden. He got us through three and a half tumul­tuous, tor­tu­ous, and his­toric years to get to this moment in 2024. 

He has fought the good fight – the end­less fight for jus­tice and equal­i­ty – for five decades and more. He has run so many marathons in a life of extra­or­di­nary and ordi­nary moments. Joe Biden is the guy Frank Sina­tra should have been singing about when he crooned “Every time that I find myself lay­ing flat on my face, I just pick myself up and get back in the race.”

Joe Biden is a man who believes in God. He strives to be a bet­ter per­son, live a decent life, and seek out the good in the midst of evil. 

Through­out his career, he has endured the agony of los­ing a wife and two chil­dren. He had to bow out of pre­vi­ous cam­paigns for the pres­i­den­cy before he won. He served as U.S. Vice Pres­i­dent for eight years, using all the skills and polit­i­cal cap­i­tal he’d built over decades as a leader in the U.S. Senate. 

Pol­i­tics can be bru­tal — it cer­tain­ly doesn’t reward the peo­ple who shake hands and walk away smil­ing, espe­cial­ly when the stakes are so high. 

We can’t get to the gov­ern­ing stage if we can’t win the race.

Today and in the days to come, we the peo­ple need to give Pres­i­dent Joe Biden the grace and strength to make the biggest and per­haps tough­est polit­i­cal deci­sion in his sto­ried career: to hand off the torch to the one per­son whom he trusts to sprint to the fin­ish line and win in November.

As some­one who has cam­paigned for and served in local and state elect­ed offices and a vot­er in every pres­i­den­tial elec­tion since 1980, I know this per­son needs to be some­one the Amer­i­can peo­ple already asso­ciate with the Office of the U.S. Pres­i­den­cy. A can­di­date unknown to most Amer­i­cans as the Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee on the pres­i­den­tial bal­lot would be the worst of all pos­si­ble unforced errors. The nom­i­nee needs to be some­one who has shown up in their com­mu­ni­ties and stood up for them. The nom­i­nee needs to be some­one who knows the stakes, has already endured pub­lic scruti­ny and end­less social media vit­ri­ol, and still comes out swing­ing and fight­ing every chance she gets.

Today, in those most pri­vate moments, I imag­ine a dif­fer­ent kind of debate in progress. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden is con­sid­er­ing whether can­di­date Joe Biden can trust some­one else to defeat Trump. My grandfather’s favorite say­ing was “Keep the Faith” and I’m bet­ting that Pres­i­dent Biden’s instincts to have faith in the Amer­i­can vot­ers will prevail. 

It takes an extra­or­di­nary act of courage to make this choice. Biden has nev­er ducked the big deci­sions. I hope the Pres­i­dent pass­es the torch to Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris to sprint across the fin­ish line first in November.