From TPM Reader JW …
I just gave $250 to Biden. Might not be a lot for some but it is for me.
When I got off work tonight & drove home, I turned on the radio (& the debate) for the time it took me to get there. A couple of minutes was enough to know it was a shit show. By the time I got home I was royally disgusted & angry. With the panel for clearly letting Trump aggress his way into extra time (though they had mic control). With Biden for sounding sick & confused – like a parody of what the right says about him, for missing clear opportunities to slam Trump for nonsense. With Trump for sounding sharp despite spewing utter bullshit at every turn. With this country for shoveling propaganda into their brains & not straight up laughing this clownish asshole out of the country.
I checked TPM to see if I just had a negative spin, but it was clear it was what it was. And it was clear the great deluge of Democrats whining was about to begin again & that it was already happening in my head.
I realized all paying attention to any of this does is to amp your anxiety & make you feel desperate. That we all think we should have a perfect candidate or perfect opportunity to set things right. We don’t & we don’t. But Biden’s a good man & he’s done so much for this country & he’s prepared to do more.
We can’t lay it all on him. Almost all of us have ways of failing to respond to the moment & the assholes of the moment because we’re built differently from them. Then we want Biden to respond perfectly when we can’t. Fuck it. I don’t need to see this debate to know I’m voting for Biden. He can shit himself in public tomorrow & he’ll still be a far superior choice to an adderall-tweaked monster who wants to fuck his own daughter almost as much as he wants to rape & murder this country. Yes, I’ll gladly accept this decent man even as he enters his own twilight. No, I don’t want a showman. Why does *anyone* want a showman at this point? We’ve been groomed to value optics over substance & we need to dispossess ourselves of that shit.
So, skip the freakout. Accept the terrible conditions. Donate money or do anything you can think of to help the campaign. Freaking out serves no one but the right’s favorite rapist. I saw Adam Kinzinger endorsed Biden. It’s not nothing. It made me feel better. Everyone needs to do what they can. Please just dig in.
My apologies to whichever kind person got the short straw & had to read this weird rant. I appreciate everything you do.
For what it’s worth, this was my response to JW …
I read them all. They go to everyone on staff. I think you’ve got it exactly right. It sucked. It was brutal. But this is where we are. And a million people in history have been in suck and brutal situations and they pushed forward. Maybe they were in a battle and then they all died. Or maybe that was the moment when they made the critical decision to pull together and they won. This is living in history where we don’t know which story we’re in. That’s life. It provides an immense psychic relief to break the existential glass and say he should withdraw. Okay, then what? I think we get Harris. She’s less popular. Or then we have five candidates. This is where we are and we have to keep fighting because that’s the only realistic choice we have. josh
