I only watched about 15 minutes of the debate last Thursday.  It was painful to watch.  The next leader of the free world is either a senile old man or another old man who lied the entire night.  Everybody knew this was the choice for several months now but I was hoping that Biden would show some life and convince the undecided that he at least can make it through another four years.  After all, he had time to prepare and supposedly people helping him prepare.  I don't think it is hard to counterattack Trump and all his lies.  Yet it looks if nobody prepared him.  So either Biden is really senile or he had idiots helping him.

So the question for the Democrats is: Should and can they replace Biden?  If so, who should replace him?  If they had a good replacement available, I would say yes, go for it.  But Harris is terrible and most democrats don't want her or believe that she can win.  But who can?  Three governors:  Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Whitmer of Michigan and Newsome of California seem to be the three politicians who are mentioned the most.  Shapiro is Jewish and given the problems with Israel right now, I don't see him in a good position to run.  Newsome is attractive to many but I think he comes across as too slick and beholden to the left wing of the party for the moderates to accept him.  Whitmer maybe a good choice since she likely would win Michigan, a swing state that the Democrats must have.  But she is not that well known nationally and coming from a state with many Arabs, will it hurt her the opposite way for Shapiro?

I know this whole thing may not happen anyway since Biden won landslides in the primaries.  He would have to pull out himself after listening to others.  This is unlikely.  Also bypassing Harris would make it seem like the Democrats did poorly in the last four years also.  But if say Biden drops out and Harris is not nominated, I nominate Jon Stewart!  Stewart would destroy Trump in a debate.  It would not only energize the base but I think it will bring in independents who want no more politicians.  Yes, the same people who voted for Trump in 2016 just because they want a big change.   Stewart may not be a great leader but he wouldn't be worse than Biden and Trump.  He is intelligent and full of energy.  He also did a lot for the 9/11 responders.  It is a longest of long shots but I think the Democrats may need a hail Mary at this time.

 Just realized that the Democratic convention is in Chicago this year.  It was also in Chicago in 1968.  That was the first time I took an interest in our national politics.  There were a lot of protests of the Vietnam war.  It was total chaos.  I think Dan Rather, who was a young reporter then, got hit by the police inside the convention hall.  The republicans blamed the democrats for allowing lawlessness.  Ironically, mayor Richard Daly had run the city like a republican would have.  He was very tough on the protesters.  Add to the infighting between the liberals and the centrists of the party, the convention contributed to the defeat of Humphrey by Nixon in the general election.

So will the democratic convention this year in Chicago turn out to be a repeat of 1968?  Will it be a disaster for Biden?  Only time will tell.  But the protests of the Gaza situation seem eerily similar to the protests of Vietnam.  The only thing is, the U.S. is not fighting today in Gaza.  Also, no young men are being drafted today.  But things will be volatile still.  And given the closeness of the election, if the convention is not peaceful, it will hurt Biden.

 As Pro-Palestinian protests rage across the country's college campuses, I find it hard to not say anything about the hypocrisy of so many of the people in power.   For the most part the demonstrations have been peaceful.  Yet many students and faculty member have been arrested.  There are calls from many politicians to send in the National Guards and arrest and kick the students involved out of school.  There have been businesses which fired employees for supporting the Palestinians.  There have been powerful law firms which have said they won't hired those students involved in the protests when they graduate.   Wealthy donors have threatened to take back donations to schools if they continue to allow the protests.  Is there really free speech in our country?

Josh Hawley, Senator from Missouri, is one of those people who advocated the National Guards be deployed to stop the protesters.  This is the same guy who went to Hong Kong to root on the so called democracy seeking students.  Never mind those protesters burned people and subways, built bombs and stormed and took over government buildings.  Yes, sort of like the January 6 insurrection in our country.  Hawley was also photographed giving the insurrectionists a power fist to encourage them.  So Hawley encourages people protesting violently and trying to overthrow governments but is against people who are protesting peacefully.  This is a great example of hypocrisy of those in our government.