For months US Democrats have been wondering why voters were not supporting their guy. He had been a good president, and enacted many worthy reforms. Donald Trump, by contrast, is a dictator in the making.
The idea that American voters, like most of the rest of us in the West, have elderly relatives, and love them though we do, know that an 81-year-old cannot take a tough job, let alone stay in post until he is 86, did not seem to occur to them.
Ah, Democrats were saying only this week, Trump is as rambling and senile. After Biden looked tired and battered in last night’s debate, Democrats added a new coping strategy. They blamed the debate moderators for not fact-checking Trump.
“Trump is just lying and making stuff up,” complained a progressive academic “But he says it ‘vigorously’ and doesn’t get fact-checked. Therefore, he’s winning”
To which the only serious answer was: get real. You are in a fight to save your democracy. You can’t expect others to do your fighting for you. You must win yourselves. No one else will save you if you do Trump a favour and field Biden, who has been a good president, but is now clearly too old, and Kamala Harris, who is too unpopular.
Maybe the pleas from appalled Democrat politicians will persuade Biden and Harris to do the right thing. But if they want to cling on, no one can force them to leave.
The days when party elites could fix potentially catastrophic problems are long gone in the US.
Say what you like about the Parliamentary Conservative party, and by God there is a lot to say, but when it needed to get rid of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, it kicked them out in a matter of days. No one has that power in the US.
Suppose, however, that Biden and Harris realise they are only helping Trump and step aside for the good of party and country,
Delegates at the Democratic National Convention in August would be free to pick new candidates. A civil war between left and right would play into the hands of Donald Trump.
So, and once again you need fixers who can impose the Democrat politician who stands the best chance against Trump.
But political reforms going back to the 1970s have taken power from the men in smoke-filled rooms. They gave power to ordinary voters in primaries. Their good intentions seemed noble at the time. We are all meant to boo the fixers, damn the insiders and show the gatekeepers the door, few after all.
For all their good intentions, the result has been a disaster.
Here is my best explanation of how the road to hell is paved with constitutional reforms.
American democracy eats itself
In the coming months a grim historical irony could play out as democratic righteousness destroys democratic government. Open-hearted, liberal reforms to extend democracy and empower the voiceless may deliver America and the West to the deranged, dictatorial rule of Donald Trump.
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