In the immediate aftermath of President Biden’s debacle in the first presidential debate, his family, for perfectly understandable reasons, urged him to remain in the race. Less understandably, his advisors, many Democratic notables, and officials in the Democratic Party were determined to “stay the course” and downplayed or dismissed his revealing performance.

Some courageous voices among his friends in the media immediately rose to the occasion and urged him to step aside. A friend tells you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.

A CBS News poll showed that only 28 percent of the electorate believes Biden should be running for President, while 72 percent believes he should not. Similarly, a mere 27 percent believes he has the mental and cognitive health for the job. Surprisingly, 50 percent believes Trump does.

Democrats have a month and a half until the national convention. The sooner President Biden bows out, the better.

Biden might urge the Democratic Party to nominate his V.P., Kamala Harris. Other possible replacements include Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Governor Wes Moore of Maryland, Governor Jared Polis of Colorado, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina, Senator Chris Murphy, Governor Gavin Newsom of California, Senator Corey Booker, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota, Pete Buttigieg, Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky, and Senator Sherrod Brown. Any of these would likely have cleaned Trump’s clock in that debate.

This race should have been a shoo-in for the Democrats, running against an out-and-out Usurper.The primary reason the presumptive Democratic nominee is trailing such a man is because of widespread concern about the age and mental fitness of that presumptive nominee, which concern has been growing for most of his four years in office. 

This amounts to a collective failure among Democrats.

While President Biden has accomplished a lot in four years, one notable disaster is his sponsorship of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s “mighty vengeance” against the Palestinians, now in its ninth month, with 38,000 Palestinians dead. If ever a leader needed a war and a compliant American President, it was Netanyahu.

The Gaza war has demonstrated how short-sighted has been America’s policy of arming Israel to the teeth. That has allowed Israel to enjoy such a power advantage over adversaries, including Hamas, that it felt no urgency to negotiate a political solution with the Palestinians. 

Instead, for years in the West Bank it continued to expand settlements and tolerate settler violence, and in Gaza maintain a blockade and repeatedly respond disproportionately to perceived provocations by Islamic Jihad and Hamas. Israeli leaders assumed they could thus “contain” Palestinian discontent indefinitely.

The result was October 7. Though Hamas is not particularly popular in Gaza (in contrast to its growing popularity in the West Bank) it is hard to imagine there is a single Gazan youth old enough to comprehend what has happened who does not hate Israelis by now. That does not bode well for Israel’s security.

The little that Biden has been able to restrain Israel in the last nine months pales in comparison to the human toll and suffering his continuous arming of Israel has produced. Netanyahu trusts that with the support of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), no president will have the nerve to freeze offensive military aid.

The Democratic nominee, whoever that will be, risks losing significant numbers of Muslims, liberal Jews, Blacks, and youth if she or he does not promise a new policy for Israel and Palestine. Henceforward, any aid to Israel should be leveraged. AIPAC must no longer hold a veto power in Washington.

For any possible Democratic contender, I recommend reviewing the columns of Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, beginning with his latest: “A Message From the West Bank: ‘We Are Coming to Horrible Days’” (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/29/opinion/israel-gaza-west-bank.html?te=1&nl=nicholas-kristof&emc=edit_nk_20240629). He has no illusions about Hamas; he understands how our staunch support of Israel has effectively obliged the most extreme Palestinians. Above all, he understands that Israelis will not know peace and security until Palestinians know the same.