Why Biden Should Keep Running

The Democratic Party’s Media Tabernacle Choir, its columnists and commentators, now engages in a Greek Chorus of Performative Virtue-Signaling. John F. Harris, at Politico, says “The Media Establishment Lays on the Horn: Joe Must Go.”

Round up the Usual Suspects: The New York Times editorial board, en masse, says “To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race.” Paul Krugman calls Biden the best president of his adult life and says he needs to withdraw. Thomas Friedman says “Biden Is a Good Man, But He Must Not Run.”

And so on. And so on.

Malarkey.

This is not my cynical ploy to attempt to cement Biden into the Democratic nomination as a chump for Trump.

Though I did not vote for Biden, I’ve often thought that he has a becoming resemblance to Harry Truman, a president I greatly respect. I was about 10 weeks old when Harry and Bess took the train back to Independence after Ike was inaugurated.

Harry was my first president.

Truman, in 1958, gave a speech to the Reciprocity Club: “I’m proud that I’m a politician. A politician is a man who understands government, and it takes a politician to run a government. A statesman is a politician who’s been dead 10 or 15 years.”

How fickle the American public? Aside from the photo of Harry holding up the Chicago Daily Tribune banner headlined “Dewey Defeats Truman,” most have forgotten the depths of despair into which Democratic Party partisans were plunged at having Truman as their 1948 presidential candidate.

Yet he won.

George Allen, a Democratic political operative, recalled in his memoir, Presidents Who Have Known Me, per NeglectedBooks.com:

"Almost all the political experts, both professional and amateur, were wrong in their predictions about the outcome of the last Presidential election [1948–Ed.]. But not one of them was more wrong than I. Indeed, I was even wronger than George Gallup.
"To make it worse, I was, at the time of the campaign, a sort of self-appointed unofficial advisor to President Harry S. Truman. I was in a position to tell him how his campaign should be run, and I did so. All through the campaign Mr. Truman ignored my advice, and all through the campaign I kept promising myself that when he lost to Thomas E. Dewey I would remember to be generous and not say, “I told you so.” When it was all over and he had won, I told him that I had been supremely confident of his defeat.
“'So was everybody else,” he confided, “but you’re the first one who’s admitted it.'”

Per Snopes,

"Few figures in American political history have been as reviled as President Harry S. Truman was when he left office in January 1953. After the end of the Great Depression and World War II, public dissatisfaction with 20 years of Democratic rule, the New Deal reforms enacted by Franklin D. Roosevelt, and numerous labor strikes, along with frightening political events such as the Soviet Union's successful test of an atomic bomb, the Communist revolution in China, and the stalemate of the Korean War all combined to send Truman's popularity plummeting to an unprecedented nadir by the end of 1952.
"In the half-century since the end of Truman's presidency, though, his popular image has undergone a remarkable reversal, and he is now held up by both Republicans and Democrats as the plain-speaking, tough-but-fair exemplar of what a president should be."

Biden’s recent Big Debate Fiasco deserved the failing grade the Chatterati gave it. Yet, per Politico, the “class that matters” — Democratic elected and party officials — rather than “the class that chatters” — has remained in near unanimous, if subdued, solidarity with Biden.

Yes, Biden failed to deliver any upper cuts or roundhouse punches to K.O. Trump in the match. That said, Biden’s problem is more likely rooted in his avuncular disposition than in his age.

Biden’s age gives him the advantage of perspective. Scranton Joe surely could not have failed to notice the reputational rehabilitation enjoyed by Truman in the years after he left office.

Harry’s now been Up There drinking bourbon and playing poker with Saint Peter and other Celestial Statesmen long enough to have earned statesman status. As we now celebrate Harry Truman’s dignity, let’s not overlook Joe Biden’s ... whether he has your vote or not.

Let’s put the Great Debate into perspective, recalling what might be Harry Truman’s most affectionate valediction to his life in politics:

“My choice early in life was either to be a piano-player in a wh***house or a politician. And to tell the truth there's hardly any difference.”

Cue the piano: You must remember this / A kiss is still a kiss / A sigh is just a sigh / The fundamental things apply / As time goes by.