It's quite a choice for voters. Say you're one of those who is concerned about Trump's actions in the weeks following the 2020 election. “Everything he did after Nov. 3, 2020, Election Day, was a disaster, both for himself and the country,” this newsletter wrote back in 2022. At the same time, you are satisfied with many of the results of Trump's presidency, both in what happened, including a strong pre-COVID economy, solid business deregulation, sound energy policy, and judicial appointments, and in what did not happen. This is from one of Trump's most indefatigable critics, Robert Kagan: “On Trump's watch, there was no full-scale invasion of Ukraine, no major attack on Israel, no runaway inflation, no disastrous retreat from Afghanistan. It is hard to make the case for Trump's unfitness to anyone who does not already believe it.”
And on the other side? A man whose infirmities have been visibly increasing, who is now 81 years old, and who seeks to be president of the United States until he is 86. A man who even if he were not too old for office has performed in a way that majorities of voters disapprove. And a man who has decided he has little to offer voters beyond a dystopian vision of the future if his opponent is elected. That is the path Biden has decided to take in 2024.