[LA Times] Remember when some people (yes, one of them was me) used to obsess over President Biden’s age and future because we were worried about a President Kamala Harris? She’s come into her own as the Democratic nominee, especially for non-Californians unfamiliar with her career before the Senate. We are learning much more about her contributions and experience as vice president, and watching her handle the challenge of an abbreviated campaign with skill, humanity and toughness.
Setting the stage.
Now it’s
JD Vance’s turn under scrutiny. Two things are different.
First, Donald Trump, 78, is showing signs of deterioration that are far more expansive and disturbing than those that led Biden to end his campaign. Trump’s speeches are interminable and devolve into gibberish, misplaced syllables, ungoverned hate speech and wildly inappropriate vulgarities — all warning signs of mental decline.
There’s a second key difference between concerns about Trump’s age now and questions about Biden’s age a few months ago: If Trump wins and can’t fulfill his term, he would be replaced by Vance — an ambitious newbie senator who is already very well known and has given Americans plenty of reasons to worry.
Since his rise to national attention with his 2017 memoir "Hillbilly Elegy," Vance’s TV, radio and podcast interviews have created a voluminous record of ideas and opinions that his Democratic counterpart, Tim Walz, memorably described as weird.
And yet, the LA Times did not endorse Harris. However...
It’s conceivable that if Trump were in dire shape, he might consider stepping aside and handing the reins to Vance — no doubt with an agreement that President Vance would pardon Trump in the federal cases he faces. But the cases moving through state courts in New York and Georgia — not subject to a presidential pardon — would still hang over Trump, so it’s also conceivable he would refuse to abdicate no matter how incapacitated he became.
That’s unthinkable, and so is a truncated Trump presidency that would give us a President Vance. There is only one certain way to prevent both scenarios: Defeat this pair on election day.
