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At this somber moment, the end of Joe Biden’s candidacy, recall a horribly crass moment.
It was 2020. After addressing the fawning zealots of the Conservative Political Action Conference, then-President Donald Trump sashayed over to the U.S. flag, grabbed it, pulled it to his face, swayed with it, kissed it and mouthed, “I love you, baby.”
Writing in defense of Old Glory, CNN commentator S.E. Cupp called it the “smothering, unwanted advances of an unstable lech.”
It was demeaning theater that Joe Biden would never contemplate.
Today as many thank Biden for his service and his sacrifice, let it be said:
Donald Trump left his DNA on the flag.
Joe Biden will retire with the flag’s DNA in him.
Biden’s whole adult life has been spent serving country over self – more than half a century in the arena.
He’s not been there to enrich or glorify himself.
Joe Biden made the nation his principal concern. In his wrenching decision to end his candidacy, he put the republic first — such a contrast to the Big Lie architect who conspired criminally in his quest not to leave.
I was a Biden-for-president guy before most of my ideological kin.
I realized how much I wanted him as our chief executive in 2018 when I saw him stirringly memorialize a political rival, John McCain. Biden’s comments showed him to be the embodiment of the dignity and good will that we should expect of everyone who represents us. You know, those Christian qualities.
(Not present that day: Donald Trump, who mocked McCain’s Vietnam POW ordeal with, “I like people who weren’t captured.” What a saint.)
So, Biden ends his pursuit of a second term. Now what?
Maybe we can talk about issues — pesky policy stuff. The fact that one candidate is a whole three years older than the other candidate will not be one of them.
If Vice President Kamala Harris is the nominee, the issue of state-ordered gestation for pregnant women will assume an even higher profile.
Indeed, if ever there were the right time for a woman to lead us out of that dark alley, it is now.
Harris has been a sterling presence on the stump, highlighting at rallies near and far the dangerous injustice of the Trump abortion ban.
She’s hammered Trump over Project 2025, which has his name all over it but from which he seeks to distance itself.
Why? It’s everything a would-be dictator would want – an end to civil service as we know it, replaced by loyalty-to-Donald oaths.
It would blow up environmental protection and climate action. It would demolish the Department of Education.
Rather than find reasonable and humane solutions for immigration, it calls for mass deportation for people who’ve lived here productively for years.
It would provide for a redux of the disastrous Trump tax cuts that ballooned the deficit and mostly benefited those who needed no help.
It would gut the Affordable Care Act and send millions of Americans adrift desperate for health coverage they can’t afford.
Trump stands to abet his boy crush, Vladimir Putin, in his aims at subjugating Ukraine.
Trump’s proposed 10 percent tariff on all foreign goods would cause inflation to skyrocket and harm low-income earners.
Trump deceitfully frames tariffs with the lie that foreign competitors pay for them. No, they don’t. We the consumers do.
It has been sick and indefensible that the media have allowed these matters to be submerged under the weight of sordid speculation about Biden’s fitness and future.
That matter is now moot.
Biden has had an immensely successful presidency. Job creation. Manufacturing. Infrastructure. Far-seeing climate action. A strengthened NATO.
However, never forget the greatest thing he did for his country. He beat Donald Trump.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: [email protected].
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