Ask What You Can Do for Your Country

Vanity, longstanding custom, and political careers must give way to stop Trump. For President Biden, that can only mean one thing: not running.

Perversely, leading voices among U.S. Democrats were secretly hoping early this year for the inevitable: Donald Trump as presidential candidate. Trump would be the only candidate that the incumbent President Joe Biden could beat, they admitted.

But as the anti-Trump candidate, Biden has motivated few Americans to support him so far. Since the disastrous debate, however, it is obvious that Biden is much too weak as an antidote for the poison that is Trump.

The country’s most reactionary forces are currently lining up to return the country to the level of sociopolitical development of the Founding Fathers under a Trump presidency. The Heritage Foundation, which has always been conservative, has transformed into a Christian fundamentalist nationalist planning committee and drafted a blueprint for the fundamental transformation of the U.S. with its “Project 2025.” This alliance between Trump’s Make America Great Again movement and leading political thinkers from a previous century may achieve executive power in November.

In that case, even if the Democrats controlled Congress, it would be of little use. No conspiracy theory could be more appealing. The central question, the only one that Biden and potential alternatives—Vice President Kamala Harris, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Gov. Gavin Newsom, Gov. Wes Moore, and others—should be asking themselves in this situation is, who has a chance to save the U.S. from reactionary tyranny?

Kennedy’s Exhortation Applies

Biden spoke with a group of Democratic governors on Wednesday, saying he needed their support—and it appears that he got it. But discussion about alternatives are well underway. “Doing Nothing About Biden Is the Riskiest Plan of All,” read the headline on a column by U.S. election guru Nate Silver in The New York Times on Thursday. Nothing is riskier than letting Biden continue as the candidate.

At his inauguration in 1961, Democratic President John F. Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.” The famous passage has never more important than it has in recent weeks. Everyone, all the forces in the U.S. that determine who will be the Democratic presidential nominee in November need to answer this question. Vanity, political careers and longstanding custom all need to give way to it. Especially, and primarily, President Biden needs to ask himself this question. The only possible answer is, I will not run.