Joe Biden’s Replacement Must Embrace Economic Populism

Just over three weeks ago, Joe Biden and Donald Trump met for a debate. The most devastating moment was when Biden said, “I’m going to continue to move until we get the total ban on the … the … the … total initiative relative to what we can do with more Border Patrol and more asylum officers.” Trump responded, “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence, and I don’t think he knows either.” The general impression, even for many erstwhile Biden loyalists, was that if this man were a private citizen, his children would be having a difficult conversation about moving him to an assisted living facility.

Today, he finally threw in the towel. We’ve already heard a lot of pablum about how this was an act of extraordinary patriotism — that Biden sacrificed his personal ambitions for the sake of saving the country from Trump. The reality is that he stubbornly clung to the nomination for weeks after it was abundantly clear to all but his most fanatical loyalists that he was incapable of winning. We’ve also heard a lot of tributes to his presidency that leave out his shameful decision to provide diplomatic cover and material assistance to Israel in its genocidal rampage in Gaza that has displaced the vast majority of Gaza’s population and killed more children than had been killed in all the war zones in the world in recent years.