Same as it ever was ...

Damon Winter/The New York Times

The worst presidential race in my lifetime looms between Agent Orange and Sleepy Joe, two vastly despised candidates espousing views not attractive in ways boggling the mind. One bent on being Mussolini lite, the other, being Israel's lap dog. Oh dear god, deliver us from these two, please but, as Talking Heads so eloquently expressed in Once in a Life Time, it's Same as it ever was, in the year of our lord 2023.

Yes, both men are unpopular, remarkably so. Only a third of Americans view President Biden favorably, and two-thirds of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters want to nominate someone else for the presidency (no one in particular, just someone else, please). Trump is the overwhelming favorite to become the Republican nominee for the third consecutive time, but his overall approval rating is lower than Biden’s. And while 60 percent of voters don’t want to put Trump back in the White House, 65 percent don’t want to hand Biden a second term, either. The one thing on which Americans seem to agree is that we find a Biden-Trump 2024 rematch entirely disagreeable.

Like so many others, I also wish we could avoid that choice or at least defer it. As the journalist Amy Walter has put it, “Swing voters would rather eat a bowl of glass than have to choose between Trump and Biden again.” Well, it may be time to grab a spoon and unroll the gauze. When half the country believes democracy isn’t working well, when calls for political violence have become commonplace, when the speaker of the House is an election denier, it is time to face what we risk becoming and to accept or reject it. We have no choice but to choose.

Unfortunately ...