Helen Lewis writes:

Allow me to summarize the response from outside America to the news that President Joe Biden is not running for reelection: Thank God.

Here in Britain, the most common reaction in the minutes after the news broke was sheer relief. Relief that Donald Trump will not be allowed an easy path to a second term. Relief that the Democrats will put forward a candidate who is able to bear a full campaign schedule—defending the party’s record and advancing its best arguments. Relief, too, that the party would not be insulting the intelligence of voters by insincerely pushing a candidate that its leaders must have understood was a lemon.

The last of those has dominated my thinking since the disastrous CNN debate in June. Imagine that Biden’s staffers had gently shepherded him over the line, coaching him through interviews and propping him up through public events. Imagine that Biden had somehow won the election despite the evidence of the polls—and then, disaster. Within months or weeks, it surely would have become apparent that he was unable to serve a full term.

If all of that happened, then the American people would have, quite rightly, felt that they had been duped. Any sense of the moral high ground—something the Democrats have been keen to claim in the face of Trump’s very real outrages—would have disappeared. How can you ask the voters to trust you when you don’t trust them enough to tell them the truth? [Continue reading…]