Raging into the storm: President Biden's Lear moment

 

President Biden's debate performance brought King Lear's harrowing scenes to my mind.

An aging leader exposed in his infirmity to 51 million viewers, lost in the campaign storm, wandering in the dark of a declining mind to collect his thoughts, then showing up defiant after the collapse in several rallies, in stubborn denial,  surrounded by political courtiers and family enablers unable to tell the President he has no clothes on.

In the twilight of their careers, leaders often face the challenge of reconciling the injuries of age with their governance responsibilities. Shakespeare's King Lear is the Western Canon's standard, where the aging monarch's delusional decision to divide his kingdom precipitates his tragic downfall. In Biden's case, his decision to debate his rival before the conventions showed the same lack of self-awareness and, I must add, honest feedback.

Act Two: Knives out

The next day, Shakespeare's motive switched from King Lear to Julius Caesar,  as a chorus of voices within his Democratic party and influential media outlets that until the day before praised his mental acuity and dismissed rumors of his cognitive problems turned against him and questioned the prudence of his reelection as if the degree of Biden's condition were as surprising to them as it was for the entire country.

A crowd of Brutuses circled Biden in a shark's frenzy,  pressing him to resign and find a viable replacement three months before the presidential election.

Biden's outcomes need not be as dire as those of Lear. Still, the consequences for the country in a second Trump presidency might be. 

So much for President Biden, his entourage, and the Democratic party.

Act Three: Trumpers at the gates

For one time, Donald Trump left the center stage to a rival. As a seasoned showbusinessman, he followed the old rule of never interrupting a rival committing suicide. He just seasoned the unexpected self-cooking adversary with sporadic riffs of lies and a torrent of made facts to run the clock.

Now, the Democrats are running for the hills, trying to save their seats in Congress, and governorships are at risk from Biden's campaign implosion.

With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that Biden's fate was sealed when he accepted the nomination of a left-turning party with an unpopular agenda because of his electability as a moderate. The lack of action on illegal immigration and inflation doomed his reelection well before the debate.

Biden's candidacy was a compromise between the aging, traditional New Deal-blue collar–labor, pro-Israel wing of the Democratic party and the ascendent college campus-urban, identity politics pro Hamas Left Wing. Biden brought the electability of the former and adopted the latter's agenda, adding a VP acceptable for that faction.

The result was a series of fatal policy errors that alienated the votes of small-town America and the Democrat's traditional base. The most damaging was loosening asylum policies, which overwhelmed border controls with a massive wave of an estimated 15 million illegal immigrants. 

Republican border governors in Texas and Florida -the most affected states- played a brilliant card in busing thousands of asylum-seekers to Democratic "sanctuary cities." Soon, New Yorkers and Chicagoans started to echo the protests of red states, and Biden's approval ratings plummeted to Jimmy Carter's mid-thirties.

Biden's trillionaire "stimulus" spending triggered inflation at the gas pump—political poison in the US—and further alienated middle—and low-income voters.

If Donald Trump hadn't been elected as a candidate, Biden's votes would have dropped even further. Still, the misguided strategy of pursuing multiple legal actions backfired, making Trump look like a victim of political proscription, a sure way to mobilize his base and dilute his true crimes of January 6-.