President Joe Biden’s record is his record, and history can’t overwrite it. During his years in the White House, he signed major pieces of legislation regarding economic stimulus, infrastructure, clean energy, gun safety, the American semiconductor industry, marriage equality and more. They were not foregone conclusions. They have brightened many Americans’ futures. He’ll be remembered admiringly for that.
But his legacy all in all hinges on Nov. 5. If Vice President Kamala Harris beats Donald Trump, Biden is golden — not just forgiven for his long delay and fierce reluctance before giving up on a second term but also lionized for letting go of that dream.
If Trump wins, Biden will face a much different judgment.
All of us who recognize the danger and depravity of Trump are on tenterhooks, and all of us will suffer, as a country, if he returns to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But Biden’s stake in this election is singular, and that’s not even factoring in Trump’s sinister and chillingly undemocratic pledge to sic federal investigators and prosecutors on Biden and his family.
The historical anomaly of how Harris emerged as the Democratic presidential nominee and the unusually hurried, compressed nature of her campaign are the direct result of Biden’s initial insistence, despite voters’ clear concerns about his age and vigor, on running for re-election, and of his persistence for more than three weeks after his disastrous performance in a debate with Trump in June.
By the time he dropped out of the race on July 21, three days after the end of the Republican National Convention and less than a month before the beginning of the Democratic National Convention, there was no real opportunity for any mini-primary to determine his replacement. No way to see how various candidates might stack up against one another in a competition for the nomination. Perhaps Harris would have prevailed. Perhaps not.
And the postmortems after a Trump victory would not focus primarily on any ill-considered, easily weaponized remarks, such as a comment Biden made on Tuesday that seemed to refer to Trump’s supporters as “garbage.” They’d emphasize and dwell on the unanswered questions surrounding the primary that never happened.
They’d be postmortems like no others, because Trump is such a dire threat. That was the proposition of Biden’s 2020 campaign — he came out of quasi-retirement in his late 70s because, he told us, stopping Trump demanded it. And barring Trump from the White House is similarly central to Harris’s closing argument. She spoke on Tuesday night from the spot in Washington where Trump infamously riled up the hellions who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as a reminder: Trump is an enemy of democracy and an agent of chaos.
Which is truer than true, and which is why a transition from Biden to Trump would prompt a magnitude of despair and an intensity of soul searching unfamiliar from party changeovers past.
There’d be recognizable elements of that reaction, such as a hindsight-is-20-20 analysis of the losing candidate’s strategic decisions and strengths and weaknesses. What if Harris had chosen a different running mate? What if she’d more quickly, squarely and eloquently articulated the changes in her positions? What if she’d done more probing media interviews sooner, to beat back any suggestion of excessive caution?
The list would be endless, and I hope it would at some point yield to the acknowledgment that Harris burst into her sudden candidacy with a remarkable assurance and poise that greatly exceeded her detractors’ expectations. That she summoned enormous energy and demonstrated formidable drive. That she delivered an excellent convention speech. That she demolished Trump during their one debate.
But she was denied the experience — the seasoning — of a full primary process. What if she’d benefited from that? Or what if that process had produced a Democratic candidate who could have more easily established separation from the incumbent?
What if that incumbent hadn’t held on so tightly for so long? That’s the question that so many other questions would come back to, in a manner that would tie the verdict on Biden’s presidency to the name of his successor with an ironclad tightness. That’s no doubt part of why Biden has reportedly itched to get out on the campaign trail on behalf of Harris — he understands not only how much the country has riding on this election but also how much he individually does.
And that’s the millionth reason I’m fervently hoping and desperately praying that Harris prevails. I believe Biden to be a good man who has done much good for us. That can rise to the surface if we don’t sink to the bottom.
For the Love of Sentences
In The Washington Post, Ruth Marcus articulated her emotional state as Nov. 5 nears. “I am guessing many of you are in the same condition in which I find myself: uneasy, drenched in anxiety and layered with dread — a flaky napoleon of neurosis,” she wrote. “If you aren’t feeling this way, congratulations; I’ll have what you’re having.” (Thanks to Mary Heston Cooper, Arlington, Va., and Lenore Nemeth, Pompano Beach, Fla., among others, for nominating this.)
In The Times, Michelle Goldberg noted that red lights and heavy-metal music gave Trump’s rally (of sorts) in Madison Square Garden on Sunday “an infernal carnival feeling, like watching pro wrestling in hell.” (Peter J. Comerford, Providence, R.I., and John Yerxa, Normanville, Australia)
Also in The Times, Kurt Streeter described the humble jumble of houses in Hamtramck, Mich.: “In every neighborhood within the city’s two square miles, people of all backgrounds live side by side, their narrow homes packed tightly together like well-worn novels on a bookshelf.” (Valerie Hink, Tucson, Ariz., and William Harris, Grand Rapids, Mich.)
Pete Wells explained how fiddling with the settings of his earbuds muted a deliberately assaultive bit of music by Lou Reed: “Lou’s guitars purred raggedly but semi-quietly, like an asthmatic house cat.” (Kathrine Springman, Williamstown, Mass.)
And Mark Harris took physical stock of the “Law & Order” franchise actor Christopher Meloni. “Balding, built like he’s made of a poured blend of fitness supplements and concrete, full of rage, corded with veins that look like they themselves have muscles, Meloni is a particular daddy type: a gym daddy, a rough daddy, a dangerous daddy, a daddy who seems like he’s woken up in strange places and said, ‘Did we…?’,” Harris wrote. (Gus Block, Petersham, Mass.)
In The Athletic, Grant Brisbee lamented the matchup of the braggartly New York Yankees and the cocky Los Angeles Dodgers in Major League Baseball’s championship: “Even though it has the potential to be the best World Series, it’s guaranteed to be the most annoying World Series possible. The wrong people have wanted it for years. The team that wins will throw the trophy in an arrogance juicer and get a fresh glass.” (Mark Penney, Chicago, and Betsy Buchalter Adler, Pacific Grove, Calif.)
In The Nation, Dave Zirin reminded readers of how much immigrants contribute to America by memorializing the former baseball superstar Fernando Valenzuela, a Mexican American pitcher for The Los Angeles Dodgers who died recently: “Valenzuela was bright colors streaking across the sky. The bigots will never notice that kind of beauty, because it’s tough to see the sky when you live in the sewer.” (Tom Zavitz, Missoula, Mont.)
In The Wall Street Journal, Jason Gay interpreted the spectacle of University of Texas football fans throwing hundreds of water bottles onto the field to protest a pass interference call: “It’s hard not to see Texas Football’s Impromptu Recycling Night as another example of our cultural slide into Tantrum Nation, a depressingly self-interested society in which what matters most is who whines the loudest.” (Bruce McMillen, Davidson, N.C.)
In Vox, Ian Millhiser looked back at the voluminous verbiage in the Electoral Count Act of 1887: “It is so labyrinthian it might have been drafted by a Minotaur.” (Chloe Wynns, Charlotte, N.C.)
And in The New Yorker, Ben Tarnoff remembered an analog past: “I belong to the last generation of Americans who grew up without the internet in our pocket. We went online, but also, miraculously, we went offline.” He conceded disadvantages to that: “We got lost a lot. We were frequently bored. Factual disputes could not be resolved by consulting Wikipedia on our phones; people remained wrong for hours, even days. But our lives also had a certain specificity. Stoned on a city bus, stumbling through a forest, swaying in a crowded punk club, we were never anywhere other than where we were.” (Janice Aubrey, Brooklyn, N.Y.)
To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.
What I’m Reading and Watching
In this last newsletter before Election Day, I present links to articles and videos that, I think, make different points about the danger that Trump poses and why electing him would be a terrible, terrible mistake. I’m well aware of the possibility that few if any readers of this newsletter are undecided voters. But if you share my concern about Trump, if you know undecided voters and if you believe that any of the following analyses and arguments might sway them, please show them some or all of what follows:
The Times has summarized and spotlighted Trump’s most disturbing plans. Here’s a terrific Times Opinion look at Trump in his own words. And here’s an occasionally updated delineation of his proposals by the Times political reporters Charlie Savage, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman.
Here’s an important column by Jonathan V. Last in The Bulwark about how the guardrails are already crumpling. He appended it two days later with this wise follow-up. While Jeff Bezos is the focus, he’s hardly the only prominent public figure seemingly hedging his bets in the event of Trump’s return to the White House. Joe Rogan, who called Trump “an existential threat to democracy” two years ago, just gave Trump three hours on his podcast and encouraged him to explain his rigged-election complaints: “Everybody always cuts you off.” Um, Trump lacks a microphone — a megaphone — for his grievances? And doesn’t get enough speaking time? Not where I’ve been living, i.e., the real world.
Would Trump, as president, respect women? Let this sample of his remarks about women — published recently in The Week — be your answer.
Trump’s sexism is explored as well in this recent history lesson by Jacqueline Beatty in Salon. As for the extra layer of chauvinism that JD Vance brings to the Republican ticket, read this examination of him by Helen Lewis in The Atlantic.
The Lincoln Project’s laudable contributions to exposing the truth about Trump include excellent ads. “The Girl in the Mirror” and “Their Future” are especially worth sharing.
It’s not just liberal media figures who recognize Trump’s betrayal of Americans. Here, from 2022, is the editorial board of The New York Post on how Trump’s actions — and inaction — on Jan. 6, 2021, make him unworthy of holding office.
“A Trump victory would tell us something truly horrible about ourselves,” Joe Klein wrote in this incisive edition of his Sanity Clause newsletter. Amen.
To keep you up-to-date on what I’ve been writing, here’s a post for the Times Opinion blog, The Point, about Trump at Madison Square Garden.
Retire These Words!
If Trump and Harris were forced to eat their words, at least they’d have plenty of fiber in their diets: According to pundits and journalists, both politicians are given to “word salads.”
It’s the dis — or is that dish? — du jour. And I, for one, am ready to order and savor something different.
Google Harris and “word salad.” It yields hundreds upon hundreds of hits from an addling array of news sites, all characterizing her occasionally evasive and digressive answers to questions that way.
Do likewise for Trump. His looping, twisting and twisted journeys across random subjects with scant connection are — you guessed it — word salads. I object to this on behalf of arugula. Also because I think there’s no comparison between Trump’s verbal incontinence — and the alarms it raises — and Harris’s semantic slaloms. They’re apples and oranges. Or maybe I should say Waldorf and Caesar.
“Word salad” has been around a while. The other day I did a Google search of the phrase’s appearance in news sources in September 2022. I got 9,830 hits. But when I did the same search for September 2024 (the last full month before this newsletter), I got nearly three times that number. These are the salad days of “word salad.”
Columnists and commentators, I beg of you: Adjust your diction diet. Why can’t Harris be cooking up a word bouillabaisse? Or gumbo? Or casserole? Why can’t Trump be gorging on a shepherd’s pie of jumbled verbal ingredients? As Marcia Watt of Skaneateles, N.Y., wrote to me: The “words spewed” by him “often are far more like a long-simmering stew than like a salad.”
And by most reports, he’s not much for vegetables. I’m not sure about fowl, but here’s hoping, because on Nov. 5, I for one would like him to eat crow.
“Retire These Words!” is an occasional feature about overused, oddly used, erroneously used or just plain annoying locutions. It appears every few months. Its previous installment was in this newsletter.
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