Screw These Guys

 There are so many ways the internet and social media have broken our brains, but the last month's slow deliberation by Joe Biden to leave the race exemplifies all of them. Take this bullshit take by Mark Leibovich. Biden does something almost unprecedented in American history: turn down a nomination he had fairly won. The rightful praise for the speech and the decision Leibovich dismisses as "fawning at times" because Biden took...a few weeks to announce the decision.

A few thoughts on why this just demonstrates that so-called pundits have no conception of how politics actually works.

First, we simply don't know when Biden made his decision. It could very well have been a week or two ago. Letting the Republican Convention spend all week attacking him as an old man and then dropping out is brilliant and hilarious. It also follows the old practice of "going dark" during the other side's convention as a courtesy. 

Second, this is a remarkable decision by Biden. There are maybe a few comparisons. LBJ was running then stopped once the opposition to his Vietnam policies threatened to split the party. There have been presidents who choose not to run again (Polk, Hayes) and a few accidental presidents (Tyler, Arthur) whom their parties moved on from. Otherwise this really seems unprecedented, and remarkably selfless from a man who spent his whole life overcoming the doubts and underestimation of others.

However, for a certain class of journalists - like junkies craving their next hit - the need for drama has left them with delirium tremens. They desperately wanted their Thunderdome Convention. It would be exciting! Their next rush of chaos injected into their burnt out veins. 

Biden came to his decision slowly by one timeline and quickly by another. In the constant firehose of the 24 hour news cycle, this was slow; by the movement of history it was fast. Biden has always seemed to have one eye on history. That is the privilege of age and wisdom. Not to mention that Biden had to process his own Kubler-Ross process as he made this unprecedented decision.

Thomas Jefferson once said he would rather have newspapers and no republic rather than a republic and no newspapers, but I don't think he would have felt that way if he had been subjected to the torrent of hot takes and unreasoned judgment from today's press corpse.