Do not look away, America.
This is our own doing.
For four years, poll after poll suggested we did not want to see the matchup that we saw on the presidential debate stage Thursday night. And yet here we are, and now we cannot unsee it: Once again, our country’s choices for the presidency are Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and they were as bad as we knew they were going to be back when we could have stopped this.
Why did these two pitiful candidates emerge from our primaries? Partly because of the political machine. Partly because no Democrat with gravitas wanted to challenge the incumbent. And because there aren’t any remaining Republicans with gravitas.
Even before Thursday’s debate, I felt palpable nervousness in Washington this week as we all began to sense that the worse candidate (Trump) could prevail over the bad candidate (Biden). I was coming to terms with the fact that America’s choices for president are between a very old man with a decent heart and a crazy old man with an axe to grind.