Recent articles have thrown into stark relief the frustration felt at all levels of the Democratic Party in the wake of Donald Trump’s triumphant return to the White House. While there has been plenty of finger-pointing in all directions, much of the ire has been directed squarely at President Joe Biden. This is a mistake.
Democratic insiders have lamented that Biden’s ego or overconfidence in his own popularity led him to stay in the race until it was too late. However, while Biden undoubtedly deserves a large part of the blame, it would be foolish to ignore the culpability of the people who allowed the Biden charade to continue as long as it did. After all, it was the president’s closest advisers, senior Cabinet officials and influential figures in Congress who repeatedly endorsed him as a viable leader. It can no longer be denied that there was a monthslong coordinated effort by the Democratic establishment to hide a hard truth: Biden was not fit to face another term, nor the daunting task of leading the country through a perilous moment in history.
The public was fed a story of Biden as a bridge to stability, with key Democratic voices assuring the country that he remained fully capable of fulfilling the demands of his office. Yet, as early as 2023, polls showed that more than three-quarters of Americans doubted his ability to serve due to his age, and internal sources have now confirmed that his struggles were widely known among the people closest to him.
In other words, the people with the most accurate and intimate knowledge of the president’s cognitive troubles were also the most vocal deniers of that reality.
For years, Democrats have sought to position themselves as champions of transparency and stability, Throughout the 2024 election campaign, they asserted time and again that democracy itself was at stake. Their message boiled down to the assertion that a second Trump presidency would be disastrous for the country’s future and might even spell the end of the American democratic system altogether.
Yet, by standing by a president who was visibly losing his grasp, they risked the very democratic principles they claimed to defend.
— John C. Engle, Chicago
Joe Biden’s legacy of passivity
The final chapter of special counsel Jack Smith versus Donald Trump has been written; Trump won. The outcomes of this Trump victory in his governance of the U.S. and the war in the Ukraine will become the legacy of President Joe Biden’s administration. Biden and his attorney general’s lack of response to the report of the Jan. 6 committee when the hearings occurred allowed the memory of the attack to fade. Their initial inaction paved the way for Trump’s public rehabilitation. Trump knows that people love a fighter and despise passivity.
Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland, in their claims of following government procedures regarding Trump, appeared passive and frightened. If Trump in the next four years is able to dismantle our constitutional guardrails that protect our democracy, it will be due to the incapacity of Biden to act, to lead, in a crisis in a timely fashion.
Biden’s response to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine also demonstrates his passivity in a crisis. Putin followed the outline of Adolf Hitler in Hitler’s claims to the annexation of the Sudetenland. Not able to immediately annex Ukraine, Putin undertook military action to demoralize the Ukrainian population through massive drone attacks on civilians and by destroying infrastructure.
When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy asked for arms to attack the Russian military on Russian soil to protect Ukraine, we observed the same passive behavior from Biden. He was concerned that Putin would use nuclear arms. Of course Putin would threaten to use them. Why not? But he is not mad. To respond to Putin, Biden proposed sanctions. They had no obvious effect on Putin’s war against Ukrainians.
Today, we do not yet know the outcome of Putin’s aggression.
In four years, we will know if American democracy is intact and whether Ukraine is still a sovereign nation. If neither survives, they will be permanent testimony to Biden’s failure to lead in the most serious issues of our time.
— Sidney Weissman, Highland Park
Politicians, not companies, can lie
In the United States, consumers are protected by laws from companies making false claims about their products. Companies cannot go on TV and radio and in newspapers, etc., and tell blatant lies about their products. They cannot express outright falsehoods about what their products can do, and they cannot tell blatant lies about their competitors’ products to besmirch them in order to try to give themselves the competitive advantage.
Yet, politicians who are in effect selling themselves to the American public can go on TV, radio, news and social media platforms such as X and tell lie after lie about what they will do for us and spread outright lies about their competitor, conspiracy theories and misinformation and make their own alternative facts, all while claiming the First Amendment’s freedom of speech.
Americans are left on their own to try to discern for themselves what is fact and what is fiction. Depending on where they get their information, that may be an impossible task, especially if they get their information only from Fox News, TikTok, X or other social media platforms.
How can Americans make a decision on what candidate to vote for who will be best for them and best to lead the country when what we hear is lie after lie and rarely the truth from some politicians? Politicians seemingly will say and do anything to make the sale. We must choose on the basis of whose lies seem like these politicians will do less damage to us and our country. But, often too late, it is only after a politician is elected do we we find out the truth — maybe, sometimes.
— George Recchia, Oak Park
Time to renew AIDS program
At the start of the century, Africa was in free fall due to AIDS. Mortality rates were skyrocketing. Coffin-making was a major industry. It was horrific.
Thankfully, a major breakthrough in the battle against HIV/AIDS emerged in 2003, when President George W. Bush established the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Its mission was to stem the scourge of HIV/AIDS, especially in Africa, where an HIV diagnosis essentially was a death sentence.
Now in its 21st year, PEPFAR is regarded as a phenomenal success. PEPFAR has saved more than 25 million lives — twice the number of people living in Illinois. More than 5.5 million of those are children, born HIV-free.
Today, PEPFAR provides lifesaving treatment to more than half of those living with HIV worldwide. Households once again are headed by healthy, working adults rather than by orphans struggling to keep things afloat. The numbers that cement PEPFAR’s legacy as one of the most successful government programs in history powerfully justify its continuation.
Perhaps even more powerful is the threat to progress that PEPFAR’s absence would create. One study indicates that, without PEPFAR, AIDS-related deaths could multiply by more than 400% by 2030. The number of children orphaned by AIDS could double.
Given global interconnectedness, an increase in new HIV infections anywhere in the world puts all countries at risk for a resurgence. This is not the future I want for the world. On this, I hope we all can agree.
I ask U.S. Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin and all Illinois congressman to support a clean, five-year reauthorization of PEPFAR so this critically important program can continue to save lives and move us closer to a day when everyone everywhere is safe from the threat of HIV/AIDS.
— Jan Lohs, Inverness
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