Call It Too Close to Call

 

In most elections voting (other than some protest voting) requires deciding which bad candidate is less bad. With the Republicans picking Trump, and the Democrats sticking with Biden, that surely is the situation this year. Neither of them should be elected president, but unless something surprising happens, one of them will be. I have thought that, bad as Biden is, Trump is enough worse that it was clear who was the lesser evil, and Biden should be reelected. I believed that while still respecting the opinions of people who think the plans and policies of the Republicans are better than those of the Democrats or see the green left, the bigoted DEI left, and the anti-civilization pro-Hamas left for what they are want a bulwark against them or figure they should pick the scoundrel likely to do them less direct harm and so favor Trump.

Now I am not sure, because of what has happened in the last few weeks. In the war in Gaza Israel is right and should win, and Hamas’s savages are wrong and should lose. Seven months ago Biden seemed to know that. Now he does not and has betrayed an ally in wartime. The betrayal goes beyond the disgraceful public carping and refusal to give Israel needed munitions. He and his administration effectively have switched sides by advocating for the wrong outcome of the war. If Hamas survives as a capable force, the war will have been a strategic victory for it and its masters in Iran. An end of the fighting without Israel finishing Hamas off in Rafah would produce that result. The savages would have won, and civilization would have lost. Yet that is what Biden and his administration favor. Meanwhile Trump, who I feared would abandon Ukraine, did not go on the warpath against the speaker’s plan to give more weapons and munitions to that country, giving some reason for hope he would show some sense there.

Right now if people asked me who in this race would be less bad for the country, I could not give them an answer. The best recommendation I could make would be to watch both of the scoundrels until November and hope something happens to make the right choice clear, as I thought it was a while back. (As I have written before,  my plan  now is not to vote for either of them, but most people won't see that as an option and will settle on one or the other.)