Super Tuesday to the rescue!
If the other Republicans had gotten out of the race one the danger posed by Donald Trump had become clear, Ted Cruz would be president today. Ok, he wouldn't have been my first choice. But confronted with the alternative of Hillary, I would have voted for him in a heartbeat. He would have been better than Donald Trump in several respects. He is smart. He has the sense to admit it when he doesn't know something and to listen to those who do. Whether one agrees with his principles or not, he has them and isn't simply all about the greater glory of Ted Cruz. He doesn't have Mr. Trump's fondness for bullies and tyrants and wouldn't have been so easily manipulated by foreign leaders and the more unsavory elements of the far right. And he's both more emotionally mature than Mr. Trump and a great deal more stable.
His pronouncements would have come through channels rather than through Twitter, and would likely have been a great deal more carefully thought through. And he very likely would have won the popular vote as well as the electoral vote.
Bernie Sanders is a better human being than Donald Trump. He's a scold rather than a clown. Ultimately he, too, is an authoritarian, although a far more generous one in spirit. He, too, is more of a grownup than our child president, and more psychologically sound.
But during the weeks that he was in the same position Donald Trump was in at a similar point in 2016, there was no missing the similarity of Bernie's supporters, as a group, to the presidents. Both are extremists who are far outside the American political mainstream but honestly are unable to recognize that fact, and operate on the totally false assumption that their impractical and idiosyncratic view of things is shared by most folks. Neither can admit the gaps in their own knowledge, and neither seems able to listen and learn. And both groups, considered as groups, tend to have more than a little of the fanatic about them.
The Democrats in 2020 did what the Republicans in 2016 were unable to do. They recognized the danger in time. The surprise of this election cycle was not that in internal squabbling within the party's grownups allowed the wild-eyed zealots to take over, but that the American party with the reputation for disorganization and internal squabbling did what the party whose history is of having all its ducks in a buttoned-down row could not. At a moment when Bernie Sanders seemed about to seize the nomination and lead the Democrats down the road to snatching defeat from the jaws of likely victory, Democrats all over the country stood up and shut down Bernie Sanders in no uncertain terms. Incredibly, Joe Biden won nine primaries when he was given a chance in only six, one several of them decisively, and now- with the calendar increasingly favorable and the and non-fanatical state parties predominating among those holding their primaries in the future, seems to have suddenly and unexpectedly become what many of us feared that Bernie would be right now: the presumptive Democratic nominee.
Joe Biden isn't perfect. He's gaffe-prone, and unlike President Trump, his gaffes have the potential to actually hurt him. This may be the most embarrassing campaign in history. But it's probably going to be a great deal less embarrassing than it would have been if Bernie had been the nominee. Chances are that at least some of the claims made by one of the candidates will actually be somewhat true, and while Crazy Uncle Joe may have his bizarre side, at the end of the day he knows what he's talking about and as president would know what he is doing. Neither Bernie Sanders nor, of course, Donald Trump can make that claim.
He will not only surround himself with people who know what he does not but will actually listen to them rather than forcing them out of office because they fail to bow the knee deeply enough. I am under no illusions that he will be able to undo the damage Mr. Trump has done to our country in setting Americans against each other, or that his positions and actions on hot-button issues will please everybody. They will often not please me. But he will lead from a position of trying to represent all of us and make the effort to bring us together for the country's sake rather than setting us against each other for his own. And I believe he will prevail in November.
I disagree with Joe Biden about many important things, the courts and various social issues chief among them. But he is what Donald Trump is not: a decent human being fit to lead a decent people. I support him, and his tent will be big enough to include all of us who are Americans first and partisanship second.
America has a dog in this fight after all. So do its values. So does its history. And like Superman streaking in from the sky at the last moment, when things looked the direst, Super Tuesday has unexpectedly saved the day.
ADDENDUM: And now, Elizabeth Warren has exited the race.
As an ex-Republican I hate to say it, but right now it's the Democrats who are looking like the party of grownups and the Republicans who look like a class of exceptionally undisciplined kindergarten kids.
And it's hard to argue with the notion that, as painful as it may be to admit it, they're the party that's best suited to govern America.
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