Man Up, Joe!

Bill Huey

During a ball game last night, I saw a Joe Biden campaign commercial in which he again pimps his son Beau’s tragic death, playing the empathy and “he feels your pain” themes like they are part of his aging DNA.

Joe, you’ve played that record too many times. The hour is late, the stakes are high, and we need you to be strong. Strong, Joe, like someone who can jimmy a dangerous sociopath out of the White House and back onto the streets where he came from, running from the federal prosecutor dogs at the Southern District of New York.

Enough of the empathy, Joe. Many of us have lost a loved one to cancer. It is terrible. But what we need is a strong leader, not a social worker. We need you to--as the Godfather told Johnny Fontane--“Act like a man!”

Otherwise, as you well know, we are simply doomed. If he gets another term, Trump will go wild, ravaging the Constitution to punish his enemies and reward people who have been “nice” to him—his sole determinant of character and worth.

He will go full autocrat, giving vent to his contempt for “weak” leaders like Merkel and Macron, and cozying up further to his BFF in the Kremlin. I wouldn’t even be surprised if he orders new uniforms for the White House guard, the way Nixon wanted to do.

And Trump will have his Fourth of July Parade along Pennsylvania Avenue, complete with tanks, marching bands, and a maskless crowd assembled just for the occasion, like the recent Dionysian campaign speech in the Rose Garden.

Joe, if you fail us and give Trump four more years, you and all the old heads of the Democratic Party—Nancy Pelosi, the Clintons, Steny Hoyer, James Clyburn, and the like—should dissolve the party, then go out and drink insecticide, falling on dull steak knives provided by Republican lobbyists for good measure.

Be a man, Joe! The nation is depending on you.

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Bill Huey is president of Strategic Communications, a corporate communications and marketing consultancy, and author of "Carbon Man," a novel about greed.