The panic and angst over last week’s presidential debate and debacle continues at full speed. Democrats have been downright furious at the confusion and weakness displayed by President Biden when the party needed clarity and resolve. Former President Trump, as usual, was firm and assertive — that is, vigorous — which was more than enough to make him the winner.
There are legitimate and lingering questions about Biden’s ability to serve another four years, but in terms of a leadership crisis, his age and health cannot compare to Trump’s moral decrepitude and general unfitness. The idiotic equivalence of this election season — that both men are unfit to do so on a similar scale, albeit for different reasons — is deeply and dangerously false.
And it distracts us from what's really dragging us down.
Age-related issues aside, Biden is not alone in showing his bewilderment on stage during the debate. In the face of Trump, the president’s fatigue and bewilderment reflect what many of us feel in response to an increasingly intense barrage of moral mud that is overwhelming, not just politically but emotionally.
As usual, Democrats relied on numbers and praise for their successful policies to counter Trump. The Biden administration’s accomplishments matter. Truth and reality do. Except for about half the country, which has willingly adapted to white nationalism, which is based not on facts but on emotions, specifically resentment and a sense of entitlement. It represents the very antithesis of a multiracial democracy that Biden’s policy successes support. You can talk about the importance of low-cost insulin or student debt forgiveness until you’re blue in the face — or until you’re speechless or lose your train of thought — but that doesn’t get white nationalists moving at all.
The hard truth of the past eight years is that America is leaning as much toward white nationalism as it is toward democracy (and that’s being optimistic). No one is saying it out loud, on either side, which obscures the true shape of Showdown 2024.
The Republican cult is clearly racist and anti-equality, but claims not to be, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Trump boasts about how much black people love him and how much he has done for civil rights. These are absurd claims, but they hold up because the party needs to maintain the pretense of justice that “all men are created equal,” however worn out it may be. Justice, civil rights, and democracy remain the hallmark of America, as everyone knows (to quote Trump).
Meanwhile, Biden cannot denounce white nationalism because he fears tarnishing America’s positive brand, which glorifies the “heartland,” “working people” and “everyday Americans” — code terms for “white.”
The president is in a bind: He should be the publicist in chief, saying that we are all good, well-intentioned people, but the MAGA phenomenon proves him wrong in the most obvious way. He has tried to walk a tightrope by criticizing MAGA extremists, but if those extremists number in the tens of millions and have taken control of a major political party, what they are advocating is not extremism, it is mainstream.
The problem with having to name this problem without actually naming it leaves Biden speechless, which is not good for a man who has dealt with stuttering his entire life. The entire Democratic Party and its white peers further to the left have also held back on this issue, either unconsciously or because they believe that speaking too directly about the rot of white nationalism would be counterproductive politics. As much as Biden and others may be disgusted with MAGA, they do not and will not call out white people for toxic whiteness. And so the rot spreads unchecked.
The combination of denial and paralysis around race is why watching the debate and its aftermath has been so maddening. The non-MAGA public is enraged by Trump’s usual stream of lies, insults and self-centered bluster. No one — not Biden or any younger, healthier Democrat — dares to root him out.
In the face of the primary id at the heart of Trump's white nationalism and pathological narcissism, the response must be emphatic and reiterated: “No.”To Trump and all he represents, and the people it represents.
Biden and the Democrats must be the thunder that applauds the storm of lies and bigotry that has been attacking us so hard, in so many ways, that we have lost sight of the climate we are in. We have fallen into the idea that we can control the flood or negotiate with it. But our only hope of dispelling it is to describe it accurately.
There is a silver lining: the storm is calming only because diversity is on the rise. is Who and what America is. For most of us, it is an indisputable fact, the fulfillment of the founders’ promise of a truly democratic nation. But for Trump and his aggrieved nation within a nation, that ascendant promise is a frontal assault to be waged for as long as necessary, with whatever means necessary.
It is time for most of us to also invest in the promise to use whatever means necessary. The crisis Biden revealed to the world last week is not about age, but about courage.
Erin Aubry Kaplan is a contributing writer for Opinion.
