By Marilou Johanek, Used with permission from Ohio Capital Journal
This presidential election year was never going to be a breeze for Ohio Democrats running in front-line races. The National Republican Congressional Committee homed in on three Democratic-held seats in the state held by vulnerable incumbents Marcy Kaptur (Toledo) Emilia Sykes (Akron) and Greg Landsman (Cincinnati). Its GOP counterpart in the U.S. Senate made unseating Ohio’s incumbent Democrat in the U.S. Senate, Sherrod Brown, a singular priority to take back the Republican Senate Majority.
Plus, Ohio may not be Alabama-red but it’s getting there. It is a bellwether state no more. Democratic candidates face an uphill battle from the get-go to win the hearts and minds of Ohioans. Add in the potential drag on electoral success from the marquee Democrat at the top of the party ticket in 2024 and the path to winning for down ballot Dems gets exponentially harder.
That prospect has hung like the sword of Damocles over key U.S. House and U.S. Senate campaigns waged by Democrats in Ohio and across the nation all year. But today the fear of impending defeat is even more acute as the party grapples with the imploding candidacy of their presumptive presidential nominee.
Far from effectively communicating a persuasive reason for reelection or forcefully prosecuting a case against his dangerous opponent, President Biden is the gift that keeps giving — to MAGA Republicans. They’re over the moon with the good fortune of the felon they’re fielding to recapture the White House.
Who knew a criminally convicted, twice impeached ex-president who incited a violent insurrection against his own government in a failed coup attempt would have a cakewalk back to power? Not with that rap sheet, which also includes adjudicated rapist and business fraudster. Yet here we are.
Biden is easy prey for ridicule and perceived weakness. What is dispiriting for many to watch will only get worse. The incumbent president, who has spent a lifetime in honorable public service, has already been reduced to a caricature. A muddled old man joke. From now until November pro-Trump operatives will unleash a torrent of clips from Biden’s June 27th disastrous debate performance everywhere people scroll.
If you thought the president’s flubs and frailties were mocked on Tik Tok before the debate — and they were wall-to-wall brutal — just wait. Ohio Democrats know what’s coming if Biden remains in the race. What his cadre of aides and advisors tried to keep under wraps about the advancing infirmity of their aging boss is now front and center with Democratic voters and the broad coalition of pro-democracy Americans Biden needs to win.
The panic of that electorate is palpable. They don’t want to lose their country to a vengeful authoritarian promising dystopian Project 2025 rule. They want a warrior who will fight like hell to preserve the Republic. But rank and file Democrats, Never Trumpers, and independents are not persuaded Biden can meet this existential juncture in American history.
Maybe they can still be convinced if the pervasive distraction of Biden’s cringey senior moments is mitigated. But abiding anxiety about the 81-year-old’s performative strength as a candidate has long been No. 1 on voters’ list of concerns with the octogenarian. Attempts to spin away Biden’s frailty as trivial was always an exercise in futility.
Nobody in flyover America was fooled. People saw their parents or grandparents in Biden’s shuffle and inaudible whispers — someone who had simply succumbed to the march of time. But ordinary voters, who may or may not have put their faith in Biden in 2020, were uniformly gobsmacked by how completely Biden clocked out of a presidential debate he initiated to jumpstart his reelection campaign.
In the weeks since, millions more have seen what cannot be unseen; an elderly, incoherent, astonishingly tepid candidate unable to land a rhetorical punch against a serial liar and coup plotter. It’s past time for the tough conversations on Biden the Democratic Party ducked in January. Voters deserve a reckoning about the diminished candidacy before it’s too late.
But Ohio Democrats on the campaign trail are still ducking what needs urgent, forthright debate, still settling for the path of least resistance. For the most part, Brown continues to dodge what many Ohio voters can’t get past yet asserts “there must be a resolution so that we can get back to talking about the choice in this election.” Kaptur largely prefers to be supportive and silent about Biden’s future. Sykes has also stayed mum on Biden.
Only Landsman was candid about whether Biden should remain in the presidential race. “He could be an American hero, Joe Biden, and say look, I’ve gotta step down,” the Cincinnati congressman told CNN. He hoped the president would use the time before the Democratic convention “to prove us all wrong” but conceded, “it’s becoming increasingly more likely this is maybe just too high a hill for him to climb.”
Why is Landsman an outlier on what is obvious and distressing to constituents worried sick about saving democracy? Why, as Axios reported, were Ohio’s presidential delegates instructed “NOT to respond to reporter calls at this time” (about the albatross killing the president’s odds of winning) per the “ODP [Ohio Democratic Party] and the Biden campaign”?
Not responding to a five-alarm fire belies the profound danger of letting a free and democratic America go up in smoke. To play it safe?
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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I wish that someone besides Biden were running against Trump. But I wonder how effective a campaign another candidate could start at this late date. Remember that if Biden drops out, his donations, volunteers and campaign apparatus would all transfer to Kamala Harris—in whom most Democrats don’t have confidence.
We’re caught between the devil and the deep blue sea….as my great-grandmother used to say.