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President Joseph Biden repeatedly declared that the only thing that would make him drop out of the next election would be if the Good Lord told him to do so. In the end, it wasn’t God, but a seemingly endless stream of bad luck that ended his campaign.

That Biden’s role in the campaign was becoming hopeless was increasingly obvious to nearly everyone. The BBC ran a selection of video clips showing the president’s recent stumbles, including a fall on the stairs leading up to Air Force One that left Biden barely able to stand. That was followed by Barack Obama having to lead a tottering and clearly disoriented Biden off the stage during a fundraising meeting, and a visibly confused Biden wandering off in a fog during a NATO gathering. Biden’s mix-up of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was particularly embarrassing. The bout with COVID-19 was the final stroke of bad luck that made it obvious even to Biden that the time to step down was now. 

Biden’s announcement that he had decided to leave the campaign came just in time to head off a potentially humiliating rejection from Democratic members of Congress when they reconvened today.

The question now is: Where does the Democratic Party go from here? To a large extent, the party is a jigsaw puzzle of minority identities with a wide range of often conflicting interests.  Until now, Biden has been the critical centerpiece holding it all together. 

A number of younger, more dynamic candidates are waiting in the wings. Most may prove more effective at energizing the party. The danger is that a forceful, more energetic approach could also risk alienating other sections of the party at a time when it’s crucial for everyone to pull together.

A former Yale roommate observed that when it comes to discovering who he really is, Vance prefers politics to therapy. 

Biden’s strong point was that he exuded fundamental decency while supporting the traditional values that have defined the United States for more than two centuries. In this fast-approaching election, decency may count for more than dynamism. Whoever replaces Biden will need to keep that in mind.

More than a contest between personalities, the election in November will ask Americans to decide between America’s traditional values — including the rule of law and the belief that all men are created equal — and a radically different approach that challenges the American system developed over the last two centuries, seeks to limit who can vote, and enables a wealthy elite to skim off the nation’s wealth for itself, leaving everyone else in the dust. The latter approach holds that far from being great, America is overrun by criminals, invaded by hordes of evil-intentioned foreigners, and nearly on the point of collapse, and that it consequently needs a self-appointed strongman to “make it great again.” 

This election, in short, is fundamentally a contest between America’s traditional beliefs and institutions and an onslaught of opportunism, greed, and moral corruption spearheaded by a former reality TV star and accidental president who has already attempted to incite an insurrection. Biden may have confused a few words from time to time, but there was never any question about where he stood. At the very least, we need to be clear about what is really at stake.

In the debate that highlighted Biden’s age-induced fragility, Donald Trump delivered an almost equally disturbing performance. Throughout the debate, Trump exuded a manic desire to convince us that America really is a terrible place, even though the facts make it clear that America today is in considerably better shape than just about anywhere else in the world. Trump apparently cannot see that. “We’re like a Third World nation,” Trump said during the debate, “and I’d love to ask [Biden] … why he allowed millions of people to come in here from prisons, jails, and mental institutions to come into our country and destroy our country.” 

Trump was apparently unaware that illegal immigration along the Mexican border has dropped to half its previous levels, or that crime in America has decreased by 60 percent since 1993, or that a study by the conservative Cato Institute found that undocumented immigrants are 37 percent less likely to be convicted of a crime than the average American citizen.

Trump sat through most of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, barely awake. After anointing JD Vance as his choice for vice president, Trump is likely to take a few steps back, leaving Vance as the more dynamic and youthful face of the future MAGA movement.  The product of a difficult Appalachian childhood and a privileged education at Yale Law School, Vance is intelligent and articulate. He is also an anomaly. He clearly has a large number of unresolved issues. A one-time Yale roommate observed that when it comes to discovering who he really is, Vance prefers politics to therapy. 

Vance initially denounced Trump as an idiot and a would-be tyrant, then, revealing his own identity as a political opportunist, reversed himself when he needed Trump’s support to run as a Republican for the US Senate.  

Trump rarely mends fences with anyone who crosses him, but the fact that Vance previously worked as a venture capitalist for Peter Thiel, the co-founder of Palantir, and a notable MAGA  supporter, may have been enough to turn even Trump around.

Palantir, a secretive software surveillance company that specializes in large-scale data analysis, is a leader in artificial intelligence. Since the company is in the private sector, it is immune to the kind of public scrutiny that sets limits on the CIA and the NSA. Essentially, the public has no way of knowing exactly what Palantir does. 

A number of billionaire venture capitalists in Silicon Valley have a vested interest in ensuring that Washington does not impose controls that might inhibit the development of AI technology. For these oligarchs, Vance could be Silicon Valley’s man in Washington. If Trump reaches the end of his biological tether and does an exit similar to Biden’s, leaving Vance as president, so much the better for Thiel and his fellow billionaires. 

Elon Musk, now listed as the world’s richest individual, according to The Wall Street Journal, pledged to donate $45 million a month to a GOP political action committee, starting in July. Trump’s decision to go with Vance coincided with Musk’s announcement. While all this transpired, Trump sat silently at the convention in Milwaukee, a contented and apparently barely awake sphinx. He didn’t need to say anything. The convention was entirely his creation.

The Roman Republic ended when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon. The Roman Senate protested, but it proved too frightened and indecisive to stop a strong man from seizing power. The Senate eventually did take action, and Caesar died in what amounted to a collective murder. But by then, it was too late to save the Republic. Trump is no Julius Caesar. That does not change the fact that next November, we will face our own Rubicon.

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