(With apologies to Andrew Marvell)
JULY 8, 2024 (Prospect.org)
KYLE MAZZA/NURPHOTO VIA AP
Had we but world enough and time
This coyness, Dems, would be no crime.
We could just sit and wish and wait
Till none remember that debate,
And how it showed the toll that age
Brings to those on history’s stage.
But such a time, I truly fear,
Won’t come until some distant year
When voters will no more remember—
Decades after this November.
—
And at my back I now can hear
Trump’s vengeful ego hurrying near,
Powered by the Court’s new orders,
Caging babies at the borders
Turning long-won rights to ash, it’s
Now the time of neofascists.
Unless you opt to dump Good Joe,
A stellar prez, as we all know.
But if you choose to let him run,
Democracy’s a setting sun.
The time for politesse is done.
And should your duties you neglect, a
Result will be a Trump trifecta.
So, get off your respective duffs,
Your brains are not enchained in cuffs.
Come Hakeem, Nancy and Chuck Schumer:
Tell Good Joe it’s no false rumor
That autocrats will win this race
Should Joe still occupy the place
Atop the Democratic ticket.
Though in his stead, a gnarly thicket
Awaits the Dems as they must pick it:
A candidate who’ll win the Blue Wall
States Joe Won, or build a New Wall.
But times a’wastin’. Dark Ages loom
Unless you act to squelch this doom.
It’s time for some strategic smarts,
Employ your minds, enlist your hearts,
It’s time for democratic deeds.
HAROLD MEYERSON
Harold Meyerson is editor at large of The American Prospect.
