The selection of the presidential candidate shouldn’t be the decision of the White House or Congress or the news media alone. All of them will all have their say for sure. But supporters of the Democratic Party should too. An easy way is to call your Congressional Representatives. The belief that everyone but voters should make the decision is mistaken. It matters who the nominee is, who takes the fight against Trump to the American people this fall. So to be no more than an observer to this crucial decision makes little sense.

At moments like this, sometimes, the best thing to do is to take a deep breath.

I wrote yesterday that the door seems to be closing on an alternative candidate to replace Biden unless Nancy worked her magic. Looks like I was wrong about the closing door. Reports today make it appear that Biden is seriously considering stepping out of the race.

That is good news in my opinion. Don’t think we could have won with him at the head of the ticket. By the way, I don’t make much of Kamala’s approval numbers. That they are close to Biden’s is to be expected. Assuming she is the nominee — and that is most likely — and moves into the public eye, her numbers, I believe, will go up as voters get to know her and her plans for the country.

Vice President Harris isn’t Kamala Harris the presidential primary candidate of four years ago. To the contrary, four years as the Vice President representing the Biden administration in public forums has allowed her to tweak her communication skills and familiarize herself with national and global issues as well as various policy matters. No one else on the short list of Biden replacements can make that claim nor employ that experience to contest and upbraid Trump.

Finally, as presidential candidate Harris, she doesn’t have to defend every policy of the administration over the past four years. She can stake out her own approach to various issues.

What a missed opportunity! Trump lied throughout the debate, failed to answer moderator questions, and left a lot of room for Biden to counter his false claims and demagoguery. Trump did nothing to help himself in this debate. He was dreadful.

But Biden’s performance wasn’t up to snuff either. He appeared old, lacking in energy and inarticulate which were the perceptions that Biden and his advisors wanted to dispel coming into the debate.

His failure to do so makes the climb to a second term, not impossible, but much steeper for sure. How much? We don’t know at this point. We’ll find out more in the coming week or two. What we do know is that Trump’s miserable performance tonight gives us further evidence of the overarching imperative to do whatever is necessary, including changing horses in midstream, to defeat him.

Joe Biden should step down. And he could leave with a good measure of dignity and the applause of many that he did much that was good for the country while in the White House. In his first three years he registered a sizable number of legislative and political successes and shined a light on the existential danger to democracy and democratic governance as well as governed with a sense of dignity and compassion.

In this, his final year, the same cannot be said. Between his handling (or mishandling) of the genocidal like response of Netanyahu to the horrendous murder of 1200 people, mainly Jewish Israelis, in Israel on October 7 and his ineffectual campaign for a second term, capped off by his disastrous debate performance last night, he has lost the confidence of much of his Democratic Party constituency and many others Americans.

So much so that he would be well advised by his family and closest advisors to forgo his bid for a second term, thereby allowing the Democratic Party to choose someone else in his place at its coming convention later this summer. The stakes in this election are too high to roll the dice with the hope that Biden will recover the confidence of millions and cross the finish line first in November.

Stepping down and aside is surely an unpalatable thing to do if you are a sitting president; nobody likes to end a journey that you love prematurely, especially when it is implicitly, no matter what is said, an admission that you are not up to the task. But in Biden’s case, it is necessary to accept this truth for the sake of the country and its democracy, for the sake of winning the elections in November. In doing so, Biden could take comfort and earn the sincere and rightful applause and appreciation from many Americans that he had the courage and modesty to put the country above himself.