Last month’s YouGov and Yahoo News poll found 53% of Americans lament a Biden-Trump rematch this Fall. But with the stakes so high, Rhode Islanders must be engaged despite living in a deep blue state.

Politics 101 mandates voters motivated to travel to the polls to vote FOR someone not AGAINST someone. So let’s dump the Trump stuff for a bit and focus on POTUS 46.

He looks old, he walks old, he talks old, he thinks old. He’s…..old….and thank God Joe Biden is our president. There I said it.

A recent NY Times/Siena poll, 73% of respondents said Biden was too old to be president.

As for Joe Biden’s advanced years, you can’t perform at this level with this amount of urgency for so many crises and suffer from an age causing debilitating disease. So, instead of hiding Joe Biden’s age, let’s celebrate it.

We face so many obstacles as a nation; a fragile economy, a global climate crisis, our democracy is under threat, a worldwide pandemic still hovers, war threatens a tenuous post WWII balance on freedom, we are falling into a reflux of a nation divided, a renewed assault on the marginalized and a reversal of their rights in society, including reproductive rights, minority voting rights, LGBTQ+ and transgender rights.

Wisdom is not a purchasable commodity. Empathy born from personal tragedy, cannot be replicated. It comes from lifelong experiences.

Joe Biden’s tragedies are well documented. But let’s look at Joe’s public journey.

Biden has seen the early warnings of climate change and its present-day deterioration, the dissolution of the Soviet Union to Vladimir Putin’s aggressions, the fight for equality from Martin Luther King to George Floyd, from Betty Friedan to the dreadful Dobb’s decision.

Joe has been a public servant during the inflation years of the 1970’s.

According to the distinguished economic historian Stuart Bruchey who wrote The Wealth of a Nation: An Economic History of the United States, consumer spending power was developed as a response to the economic expansion that fueled the post Great Depression /WWII economy from 1950-1959 and lasted until around 1970.

Today the income inequality gap is at an all-time high pushing the middle-class purchasing power to record lows, sights unseen since the 1930’s and pitting middle class against lower class citizens.

Biden, who has experienced both economic zenith and nadir, went into action virtually from the moment he took the oath of office.

He succeeded in passing his Infrastructure Investment and Jobs bill, The Inflation Reduction Act, and his CHIPS and Science Act providing clean energy incentives, lowering prescription drug prices, supporting safe drinking water, improving our roads and bridges, among other investments all while reducing the budget deficit. The job is not done. We need to do more to bolster the middle class, like provide free community college, childcare and universal pre-K, expand Medicare and extend child tax credits; strengthen paid family and medical leave and include ALL Americans on our journey. These provisions were included in Biden’s previous bills, but unfortunately sandbagged by the opposition. If we allow the president to finish the job it would restore our economic success and buttress our national prowess.

To find the resources for this, President Biden would chisel away at the runaway expansion the top 1%ers enjoy in welfare giveaways to the rich.

If successful, we would rejuvenate the purchasing power of a beaten down middle class, and at the same time give hope and support to a downtrodden lower class. Who would benefit the most? The most prosperous would be reaping the benefits of a soaring economic engine instead of fighting for scraps. A rising tide raises all boats.

Gaffe machine

But he’s a gaffe machine! I’ve been involved in political campaigns for decades. If I had a dollar for every gaffe I witnessed political candidates commit (from age 25 to 85) I could get a substantial down payment on a new car; and I’m especially including Biden’s apparently ‘youthful’ opponent. Lest we forget Biden gaffed his way into forcing Barack Obama’s hand on same sex marriage allowing millions the freedom of love.

Whether it’s going toe to toe with Vladimir Putin to preserve a post WWII world order to discourage authoritarianism or go toe to toe with Donald Trump to preserve democracy, no one is better equipped than Joe Biden. He is the president of our times. There is too little room for error. Too little room for playing games. Too little room for theatre.

Ron Goldstein is a part time professor of political campaigns at Northeastern University, a veteran of 9 presidential campaign cycles and in the past, a strategist on campaigns of Jack Reed and Lincoln Chafee.