America needs Joe Biden’s best to keep Donald Trump out

Leonard Greene, Tribune News Service

He’s still a little goofy, and the doddering old man moments still make us all a little uncomfortable, but on the subject of Russia’s out-of-control aggression, President Joe Biden came off last week as a strong and capable leader. At a news conference addressing the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Biden took on all comers: the bully president in Moscow, the shameless Congress in Washington and the troublemaking candidate who wants to push him out of the White House. “Make no mistake — Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death,” Biden said on Friday, mincing no words about his disdain for the Russian leader. “We don’t know exactly what happened. But there is no doubt that the death of Navalny was a consequence of something that Putin and his thugs did.” After months of “Saturday Night Live” skits, late-night monologue jokes and a scathing Justice Department report about the president’s reported memory loss, Biden came out swinging.

He pounded Putin for silencing his opposition, he lashed into lawmakers for taking a recess without voting on a Ukraine aid package, and he tore into former President Donald Trump for threatening to sic Russia on delinquent NATO members.

“All of us should reject the dangerous statements made by the previous president that invited Russia to invade our NATO allies if they weren’t ‘paying up.’ He said, if an ally did not pay their dues, he’d encourage Russia to, quote, ‘Do whatever the hell they want,’” Biden said.

“This is an outrageous thing for a president to say. I can’t fathom, can’t fathom — from Truman on, they’re all rolling in their graves hearing this. As long as I’m president, America stands by our sacred commitment to our NATO allies, as they have stood by their commitments to us repeatedly.” Biden followed up the remarks with a timely campaign attack ad calling Trump’s NATO comments “traitorous.” Biden still has his good days, and this was clearly one of them. And whether or not he’ll have enough of them to sustain the country over the next four years is debatable.

But this, as it usually is, is less about what Biden has left in the tank than it is about the match that Trump would light under it.

Again. We’ve seen this show before, and we didn’t like the ending the first time. Only this time, Trump is giving us a preview. He said he would punish the people who impeached him twice. He said he would be a dictator on day one, and day one only. He said he would sic Russia on loyal NATO allies.

Why wouldn’t we believe him?

“No president has ever said anything like it,” the narrator in Biden’s new ad says. “It’s shameful. It’s weak. It’s dangerous. It’s un-American.”

Biden beat Trump once before. But that is no guarantee that Biden will beat him again. So, now, the Democrats are playing the dangerous game of relying on the courts to do what they may not be able to do at the ballot box. Don’t bet on it. The US Supreme Court seems poised to reject efforts to kick Trump off the ballot. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed nationally to disqualify Trump under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which was designed to keep former Confederates from returning to government after the Civil War. It bars from office anyone who swore an oath to “support” the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against it. Does Jan. 6 ring a bell? Trump’s lawyers argue that efforts to keep him off the ballot, “threaten to disenfranchise tens of millions of American voters.” Trump, who appointed three justices to the Supreme Court, is likely to prevail. That would mean a rematch — and the hope that Biden has enough good days left in him.