Some reading I find powerful

 

Gabe Fleisher, a sophomore at George Mason University in D.C., writes a column five days a week titled, “Wake Up to Politics!” He’s celebrating the twelfth anniversary of the column, which means he started it at ten or eleven. He has established such a reputation that he is respected by people liked historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. I truly recommend his newsletter—it’s bipartisan to the extent that I frequently hope he’s wrong, but it is always fair.

Today he ran a link to an excerpt from the new memoir coming next week from Valerie Biden Owens, Joe Biden’s sister. I sat at my desk reading, with tears streaming down my face. The excerpt chronicled the night his first wife and baby daughter were killed in a horrendous automobile wreck, his two boys left badly injured. And then it follows with the days in the hospital, the uncertainty about continuing his newly won seat as a senator from Delaware. Not only is it heartbreaking stuff, it will convince you, should you have any doubt, that, as Lindsay Graham once said, “God never made a finer man than Joe Biden.” (We don’t know what changed Graham, but that’s another story.) Here’s a link to Gabe’s column, and you’ll find the link to the excerpt at the end: Wake Up To Politics  I want you to know Gabe, and I want  you to know Joe Biden and the kind of man he is—bright, dedicated, kind, compassionate. Not the picture the right would have you believe of a demented, senile, corrupt man who is at the bidding of Barack Obama and George Soros. Please!

I’ve been thinking a lot about President Biden lately. In a tragic accident, highly respected columnist Eric Boehlert was killed last week. His last column was about why the press is against Biden. He put the finger on something that bothers me. There are two general assumptions gaining currency for all the wrong reasons.

The first is that Democrats will lose the House and the Senate at mid-terms. History supports this, except in a couple of instances, but history has not seen a situation like this where daily we learn more about the corruption of the “former guy” and his followers and cohorts. They clearly tried to stage a coup, to overthrow a democratically elected leader. Trump is under investigation by several branches of authority. So far he has dodged charges, but there is no way this man is innocent. But in the face of that Biden has low favorability ratings, in large part to media skewering the message. Hunter Biden’s laptop is falsely big news; Donald Trump Jr.’s infamous memo to Mark Meadows fades quickly from the public eye.

History has not seen either such a worldwide battle between democracy and autocracy. It’s not just in our country, but my take on it is that so many in this country are wide awake (okay, that awful word “woke”) to the dangers facing us. I’m counting on them to turn out from the county to state to national level.

The other myth that the press promotes is that Democrats are incapable and inefficient. You constantly read lines like, “The Democrats need to get their act together,” or “Democrats better learn to play politics,” or similar things that reinforce the image of a bunch of doddering old men led by a senile man who hides in his basement. Nothing could be farther from the truth. It’s like celebrities—those who lead ordinary, responsible lives are not news. But let a salacious story come up about an affair or a drug overdose or Will Smith’s slap to the Chris Rock’s face, and the press is all over it endlessly. Democrats don’t make good copy because they are hard-working, honest, determined; Republicans make terrific copy because they lie a lot, they are outrageous, and they play to people’s fears.

So that brings me to another column I’d like you to read if you don’t already: Letters from an American by Heather Cox Richardson. Richardson is a historian at Boston University, and her daily column often traces the history of political developments, how the history impacts us today. Her column this morning is particularly meaningful: it lists Joe Biden’s accomplishments as president, and contrasts the failures of the “former guy.” It is a revelation,

There, you have your reading assignments. I wish I could make all those who claim Biden is ruining democracy and America and trump was great and accomplished so much read these works. But I’ll start with you, my friends.