Although I was born in San Antonio, TX, into a military family, my parents and grandparents were from Wilmington, Delaware. So I consider myself a native Delawarean, and as such have been very familiar with Joe Biden for many years. I am ten years younger than he, and I attended the University of Delaware nine years behind him. I consider myself an independent-leaning progressive, but nowhere close to a radical leftist. As such, up until early February I believed that the very last thing the Democrats needed in a presidential candidate in 2020 was an old white guy. Of course, like the majority of Americans, I wanted first and foremost a candidate who would put an end to the reign of King Donald I. As I listened to the prospective candidates, I thought there were a few, primarily progressive moderates like Mayor Pete, Amy Klobuchar, and Kamala Harris, who could overcome their relative inexperience and were smart enough to do it by surrounding themselves with experienced players. They were also highly effective communicators who could clearly articulate real policies without being preachy.
I don’t have to tell you what happened next. Our government botched the response to the Covid 19 pandemic worse than literally any nation in the world, and by a huge margin. The subsequent economic collapse, followed by the nationwide, continuing protest of police brutality towards minorities rounded out an unlikely and disastrous trifecta of crises. Our populace is in a state of simultaneous numbness and shock, with people’s reactions being everything from totally ignoring it all (although it’s pretty hard to ignore the economic impacts) to panicked self-isolation. We appear rudderless, not to mention woefully incompetent, to the rest of the world. I’m not going to list all of the honest mistakes, petty disputes and culture warring, and criminal negligence that have resulted in almost 140,000 American dead as of today; far better pundits than I are doing that work daily. We look at other countries’ successes and we still fail to realize that we know how to fix this; we just don’t have the national will to do it. Of course, the leadership vacuum is a huge contributor to our failure as a nation, but we ourselves are most to blame.
So that’s what we lack, but what do we need? Well, let’s imagine that we elected a leader with 40 years of experience in the labyrinthine ways that our government actually works. Who has eight years of experience as our Vice President. Who was hired in that role because of the decades of hands-on experience in foreign policy and cordial relationships with our allies, not to mention the begrudging respect of our adversaries. Of one thing you can be sure: If elected, he will assemble a team of experts in their fields, listen to their advice, tolerate their dissent, and base decisions on carefully thought-out logic and accepted science, rather than surround himself with fawning, spineless sycophants living in daily fear of (and often contempt for) their leader.
Oh, but you say, “What about all his shortcomings; his questionable votes on so many issues; his shameful handling of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings in 1990?” Joe Biden would be the first person to admit that he’s been wrong and made mistakes, but even his fiercest adversaries across the aisle never question his patriotism and loyalty. No one can work for 40 years at the highest levels of our government and not make serious mistakes. “But, he’s old and senile, or worse, suffering from actual dementia.” Almost anyone who has followed his career, and certainly anyone from Delaware, will tell you that Joe has been the master of the malapropism since he first entered the senate in 1973 at age 31. A comparison of his current speaking and writing ability with our current president would serve him very well, to say the least. He is in excellent health for his age, exercises regularly, and is not overweight. I don’t call the current president nasty names. I still have respect for the office, though it appears tarnished and cheapened to me, most of my countrymen, and people around the world, to the dismay of our allies and the joy of our foes.
But there is one outsized reason that I changed my mind about Joe for president, fully acknowledging his mistakes and shortcomings.
And that is empathy. Joe has been through hell and back in his personal life, losing a wife and a one year old daughter just weeks after his election to the senate, and his beloved son Beau to cancer in 2015. Due to these and other experiences, Joe has deep and genuine empathy for all those who are suffering grief and any kind of loss, not just family deaths. He deeply cares about the plight of minorities and women, and is the perfect man to battle the Coronavirus to its knees. He is by nature not a cynical man. He is the anti-Trump when it comes to empathy; that much is indisputable.
It's time we put our faith and our fate in the hands of an ordinary Joe.
Portland, OR
July 14, 2020
(And watch Joe's new Texas ad here.)
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