A column in the Sept. 4 Gazette about the coming national election contains (“A state of emergency,” J.M. Sorrell) a potentially dangerous inaccuracy.
The writer dismisses the candidacy of Joe Biden with the claim that “when a faux Republican (a middle of the road Democrat) runs against an actual Republican, history shows that the real Republican wins. To win, a Democrat has to show a distinction between her/himself and s/he has to lay out the reasons why voting for him/her is in one’s best interests.”
I do not know what electoral contests the writer was thinking of, but what she wrote is not true about presidential elections in the USA. All six of the successful Democratic candidates since World War II have been what she would call “faux Republicans”: Truman, JFK, Johnson, Carter, Clinton and Obama (who himself chose Biden as his running mate).
Occasionally, usually in some moment of national crisis, these presidents responded with very progressive measures (for example, the revolutionary Civil Rights laws which Johnson shepherded through in the mid-1960s).
But for the most part, they were/are moderates. The United States, for weal or for woe, is a center-right country. The attempt to run a true progressive, George McGovern, in 1972 ended in disaster. The writer further claims that Biden would “lose soundly to Trump.”
Prognoses at this point are always fraught, but recent polls show him with a lead over Trump. I agree with the writer that our nation “is in a state of emergency.” Personally, I think the Democratic Party would be wise to respond with a candidate like Biden who brings long experience, a calm persona, a moderate program and basic decency to the table.
John Connolly
Haydenville