Biden is Finished - and the Ideal Replacement is Pennsylvania’s Governor Josh Shapiro
The debate was an unmitigated disaster for Joe Biden. Although he has been a good and effective President, he is finished as a viable candidate to defeat Donald Trump.
Trump is a habitual liar, and fact-checking revealed that he attained new, unprecedented levels of falsehood during the debate. It does not matter, however. Biden fulfilled all the GOP prophecies of physical unfitness.
A pre-debate cold made Biden’s voice reflect all his 81 years. He looked haggard and memory-deficient. When he forgot what he intended to say about Medicare during an exchange, he appeared to be senile. At that point, Biden’s reelection prospects were eviscerated.
In a nutshell, this debate was uncannily reminiscent of the first Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960. Nixon had been hospitalized for ten days before the debate with a staph infection, developing from a knee injury in Greensboro, North Carolina. He reinjured his knee by bumping into a car door again while entering the debate studio in Chicago. On the debate set, his gray suit faded into the background. He received inadequate makeup, and thus, he looked ill on television. Although he spoke effectively during the debate, his extremely haggard appearance contrasted poorly with Jack Kennedy, who looked like a bronzed warrior. This enabled Kennedy to pull even with Nixon and ultimately achieve victory.
At this point, the focus of the Biden advisors should be to enable him to withdraw with dignity and avoid a defeat at the hands of rapist, racist, convicted criminal Donald Trump. Fortunately, there is an ideal candidate to replace Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee: 51-year-old Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. Josh is a mainstream center-left Democrat. And the contrast between Trump and Shapiro could not be more vivid.
Trump is a vile, unethical threat to democracy and the rule of law. His statement during the debate that he never had sex with a porn star established him forevermore as an incredibly brazen liar - an object of ridicule, to boot. Shapiro has a perfect record of ethics and integrity, bolstered by his record as the greatest Attorney General in the history of Pennsylvania. Contrast the Shapiro record of protection of democracy and the rule of law to that of Trump, the unpatriotic insurrectionist.
As Pennsylvania Attorney General, Josh demonstrated a willingness to take on powerful special interests. Courage is a quality that Josh Shapiro does not lack. He investigated and held accountable both the fracking industry for its practices that create health and safety hazards and those Pennsylvania regulators who have had an inappropriately cozy relationship with the industry.
His pursuit of the Pennsylvania Diocese Victims Report about pedophile priests and the Catholic Church’s involvement in concealing their crimes won him international praise and sparked reform within the Catholic Church.
He also established an excellent cooperative law enforcement relationship with former New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal. Together, they conducted an investigation that resulted in the dismantling of a Philadelphia-based gun ring that peddled weapons and drugs in Camden.
There was another aspect of Josh Shapiro’s record as Attorney General that enabled him to establish what a shameless liar Donald Trump is regarding his election denial claims. Josh’s magnificent defense of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania against the spurious litigations of the Donald Trump reelection campaign won him national approbation. These litigations constituted, plain and simple, the efforts of Donald Trump to suppress the vote in the Keystone State. There were five court decisions, and Josh won every single one.
Pennsylvania is perhaps the most critical swing state in the Presidential Campaign 2024. Shapiro would overwhelm Trump in Pennsylvania. His personal approval and job performance approval numbers are among the highest of any governor in the nation. They are indeed the highest of any modern Pennsylvania governor at this point in his term. These favorability ratings result from his mammoth accomplishments as Pennsylvania governor, including his expedited reopening of the collapsed section of I -95 in less than two weeks, enactment of property tax and rent-payer relief, historic investments in K-12 education, expansion of mental health services, enabling the hiring of more police, and provision of universal free breakfast and lunch for students in K-12.
There is another aspect of Josh Shapiro's life that could yield an unanticipated bonus to the Democrats: the possibility of Josh carrying Florida. Josh and his wife, Lori, are known for their diligent observance of Judaism and activism on behalf of the State of Israel. Florida has the third-largest Jewish vote of any state in the nation, trailing only New York and California. That includes a significantly large number of Jewish retirees from Pennsylvania. My late beloved parents, Melvin and Harriet Steinberg, were lifelong residents of the Pittsburgh area, and they had spent their last two decades of life in Florida. I am sure they are in heaven, delighted at the prospect of Josh becoming America’s first Jewish president.
I do not doubt that Josh Shapiro intends to remain loyal to Joe Biden without any intention of supplanting him. Joe Biden is a good and great American, but he and Vice President Kamala Harris are now eminently unelectable.
Various self-delusionary Democratic cable journalists will be on television this morning, denying the reality of the Biden debate collapse. They remind me of the song in the musical South Pacific: “Happy Talk.”
A Donald Trump Presidential electoral victory in 2024 will inevitably lead to the collapse of democracy in America. There is a way for the Democrats to avoid this—Draft Josh Shapiro for president.
Alan J. Steinberg of Highland Park served as regional administrator of Region 2 EPA during the administration of former President George W. Bush and as executive director of the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission. He graduated from Northwestern University and the University of Wisconsin Law School.