LISTEN UP

By George Smith

Listen up, Joe Biden!

I am going to vote for you, no matter what, trusting you will, after inauguration, be choosing and working with a competent, qualified cast of cabinet and other confirmed and/or appointed aides and staff.

That said, my vote will be much easier if you agree to two conditions: 1. Choose either Susan Rice or Tammy Duckworth as your running mate; and, putting your impressive ego aside, make it clear you will only serve one term.

Face it, Joe, you are on the downhill side of elderly (78 in November); you’d be 82 before you could start your second term. Too old, okay? Too damn old.

Face it, you made a personal decision in 2014-15 not to run due to the death of your son. No one should second-guess your decision. But my opinion is, and always has been, if you had hit the primary trail against Hillary, you would be running for your second term as president now. Donald Trump did not win the presidency in 2016, Hillary Clinton lost it by assuming she was entitled to sit in the Oval Office, that her past service and resume was sufficient, that attention to detail and hard work was unnecessary.

All that aside, you have a chance to reset the Democratic Party clock by running a tight, smart race, beating the slobber jaws out of Ego Man and working at bringing the warring factions in America back to the table of compromise and bipartisan sanity in regard to programs and policies affecting a majority of citizens.

Do it. We need you, Joe, we need your experience, compassion, logical temperament and basic sense of humanity and decency.

And, we need you to understand your limitations and unselfishly walk away at the end of one term, leaving the future to the next generation of leaders.

You have sacrificed much in the service of your country and those sacrifices will be your legacy.

Thank you for your service and thank you for ensuring the future of this nation by making the decisions necessary to rebuild trust in its institutions by every citizen.

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