Home Americans want Trump to face criminal charges: We also want Biden to step down
Local News

Americans want Trump to face criminal charges: We also want Biden to step down

Chris Graham
president biden
(© Rafael Henrique – stock.adobe.com)

Fifty-eight percent of us think Donald Trump should face criminal charges over the effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Even more of us think Joe Biden shouldn’t run again in 2024, and if he does, and Trump is the Republican nominee, the insurrectionist would be the odds-on favorite.

This seems to harken back to the old line about Mussolini getting the trains to run on time.

Sure, Trump tried to subvert democracy, the thinking seems to be going, but Biden is an unmitigated disaster, and things seemed to be going OK for Trump until COVID.

Fair or not, that’s the conventional wisdom.

Biden is presiding over a mess that dates back to Trump’s last year in office, with COVID still very much a driving factor in daily life, gas prices raging along the Russian invasion of Ukraine, inflation about to lead to actions by the Fed to curb it that will result in a recession.

It’s feeling like the 1970s all over again, and you might remember what happened then.

The Democratic president, Jimmy Carter, who was swept into office after a scandal that led to the impeachment of Richard Nixon, couldn’t ever seem to push the right buttons to deal with high gas prices, inflation and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, and ended up facing a strong 1980 primary challenge from Ted Kennedy in the spring, before losing in the general in a three-way race in the fall to Ronald Reagan.

Biden is looking like Carter 2.0, the one difference being, Nixon, who resigned the presidency in 1974, didn’t come back to run against Carter in 1980.

Gerald Ford, after ascending to the presidency in the wake of Nixon’s resignation, famously pardoned Nixon, whose alleged crimes mirrored Trump’s, in that Nixon, according to mountains of evidence, and his team were trying to rig an election.

Nixon, thus, could have run, but he was never a factor in the 1980 cycle.

In the redux, Trump is clearly gearing up for another run, in spite of everything.

That he would be the favorite at this two-plus-years-out stage makes for interesting discussion, and a few more clicks, but you can’t really read much into that nugget, other than, Biden is widely unpopular right now, so much so that even a would-be banana republic dictator type might be a better option.

That Biden has only a plurality at the moment among Democrats speaks volumes to that end.

I don’t know who the 2024 Ted Kennedy is. I know who it’s not: sorry, Kamala, but as the veep, you’re part of the problem, perception-wise.

I think things are already moving in the direction of justifying Biden bowing out of the race. The talk about there being concerns about his age seems to be prepping the battlefield there, because it would otherwise be weird, in the sense of being unprecedented, for a president to willingly step down after one term.

The sooner Biden could be persuaded to signal that he’s a one-termer, the better for Democrats. He won’t do this, but if he were to announce his intentions this summer, that, plus the fallout from the Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, could give Democrats a fighting chance in the November midterms.

Most likely, Biden would wait until he and his team get a look at the field of potential candidates that we can almost certainly assume will begin to emerge early next year.

I’m now thinking, LBJ in 1968, who waited to drop out well into the primaries.

Leading to a divided party, the disastrous 1968 convention, and Nixon winning a three-way general.

History repeating itself kind of bites us in the arse either way, then. Either Biden runs and risks losing, or he waits too long to not run, and risks splitting the party.

God save us all.

Chris Graham

Chris Graham

Chris Graham, the king of "fringe media," a zero-time Virginia Sportswriter of the Year, and a member of zero Halls of Fame, is the founder and editor of Augusta Free Press. A 1994 alum of the University of Virginia, Chris is the author and co-author of seven books, including Poverty of Imagination, a memoir published in 2019. For his commentaries on news, sports and politics, go to his YouTube page, or subscribe to his Street Knowledge podcast. Email Chris at [email protected].