Dick Hubert’s Worldview: The anguish is excruciating as Democrats face doomsday polls

That cry of anguish you hear?

It’s not from the followers of Donald Trump. They are exultant. The failed (thank goodness) assassination attempt has rallied his supporters to the point where some feel divine intervention saved his life.

Whether as an entire country we can agree that our politics have become toxic, and exceedingly dangerous, is a question of the hour.

We’ll be ruminating over this subject until the general election in November. And beyond.

But for sure the cries of anguish (temporarily muffled by the assassination attempt on Trump?) are the sounds of Democratic and independent voters going nuts while waiting for Joe Biden to recognize the inevitable and get out of the Presidential race.

That angry frustration you hear?

It comes from those Democrats who want Biden on the top of the ticket regardless of what every poll in the country is saying: that his staying as the Presidential nominee all but guarantees a victory for Donald Trump.

Evidence of the split starts at the highest Democratic levels in New York State, with Governor Kathy Hochul backing Biden and Lt. Gov. Anthony Delgado calling for him to turn over the presidential candidacy to somebody else.

Locally, while so many elected Democratic officials maintain silence (hello County Executive George Latimer and Rye Town Supervisor Gary Zuckerman, for starters), Port Chester Trustee Joan Grangenois-Thomas took to X (formerly Twitter) to announce she had cancelled her New York Times subscription because their editorial board had the temerity to plead with Biden to get out of the race…NOW.

As a replacement news source, she proclaimed herself a new subscriber to the Philadelphia Inquirer because their editorial board called for Trump to get out of the race. The Times called Trump in another editorial “unfit to lead,” but too late for Thomas.

Perhaps the loudest and most anguished and angry verbal explosion I’ve read from a longtime acquaintance was that of Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq war vet, founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), and now the founder of American Veterans for Ukraine (AVU).

He wrote on Facebook about an awkward looking photo of three of President Biden’s top officials at his NATO press conference:

“This is our Secretaries Blinken, Austin and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan when President Biden said, ‘Vice President Trump.’

It’s embarrassing. All of this is embarrassing. And just painful. For him and for America. Each day, more people are losing confidence in American leadership. There’s no spinning it. The world sees it. Just like the world sees the danger that is Trump. But this can’t go on.

Most of all, because #OurEnemiesAreCelebrating.

He can’t be the candidate. That was shattered beyond repair at the debate. Now, it’s just like everyone is watching the races just to see the crashes. The most important question is if he’s even able to serve as Commander in Chief right now. And it’s a fair and very necessary question.

It’s time to take the keys away from grandpa before something really bad happens. The Dems should salute and celebrate his life of service at the convention, as he nobly passes the baton to a new candidate and generation. That’s how they should orchestrate it—before events and his deteriorating health dictate another, less-controlled path. It’s the only shot they (and we) have to beat Trump. And even that’s a tough road now. AND, we also have to hope he can make it to January.

We are in very, very deep waters as a nation. And as a coalition of free nations. We need strength, stability and the closest thing we can get to unity ASAP. In America and alongside our allies. Before our enemies exploit all this. Or potentially, multiple enemies exploit it in coordination.

The stakes have never been higher since maybe the Cuban Missile Crisis or WW2.

And this is a time for selflessness, patriotism, and the true sacrifices that real and great leadership requires.

And it’s DAMN painful and awful to watch. Like when your beloved team has been knocked out of the playoffs, but still has to play out the regular season, and continues to get beat every night. It really sucks to watch. And to live through. It hurts.

It feels like our President is the NY Jets.”

Comparing Biden to the New York Jets? That resonates. “The stakes have never been higher since maybe the Cuban Missile Crisis or WW2?” For sure.

What about Ukraine and Russia, 

and Israel and Hamas?

I for one read the plaintive cries of our Ukrainian born reader, Galit Sedelev. Her letter in these pages last week tore me apart. 

No one else in our readership seems to be responding to what she has to say, as we all watch the unrelenting bombardment of Ukraine by Russian air and missile forces, the inability (imposed by President Biden) for Ukraine to hit back inside Russia with our supplied long-range weapons (for fear of starting WWIII?), and the obvious steady deterioration of Ukraine’s ability to fight back.

I liken the lack of response to the quiet dread of our readers concerned about the fate of Israel as the war with Hamas drags on. “Drags” is the appropriate word, for Hamas has sucked Israel into a guerilla war from which there seems no end in sight.

Even worse, the fears of Israel additionally winding up in a full-scale war with Iranian backed Hezbollah forces in the North rise by the hour.

At the same time, Israeli society is being torn apart by the internal struggle for political supremacy between extreme Hasidic and secular Jews.

We have family friends with relatives in Israel. No one wants to talk about what is going on in Gaza, or the West Bank, where extremist Hasidic settlers regularly attack resident Palestinians. It’s like a nightmare from which it is impossible to wake up. 

Which brings me to Mondaire Jones

In the Republican-Democratic struggle for Congress in our neighboring 17th District, Democrat Mondaire Jones is caught up in the ongoing tug of war between extreme Hasidic and secular Jews.

A “former” Republican, Anthony Frascone, signed up for and won the June primary for the Working Families Party line in the Congressional race.

As David McKay Wilson reported in The Journal News July 3:

“Former U.S. Rep. Mondaire Jones has lost his bid for the Working Families Party line in the 17th District to a former Republican from Rockland County who Jones charged was a plant by the local GOP.

The count on Wednesday of 142 outstanding absentee and affidavit ballots in Rockland County solidified the election-night lead of Anthony Frascone, a Congers resident who circulated petitions to challenge Jones.

Jones had hoped for the minor party line in his campaign to oust Rep. Mike Lawler, R-Pearl River. The 17th District includes Rockland and Putnam counties, Westchester north of White Plains, and three municipalities in southern Dutchess County.”

As public radio station WNYC’s Brigid Bergin reported on their Gothamist website June 28:

“Almost all of the nearly 200 new Working Families Party voters who registered between June 6th and 15th were from Monsey and Spring Valley in Ramapo, both areas with large communities of Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish voters who frequently vote as a bloc.”

Jones won the secular Jewish vote when he was our Congressman before redistricting.

In our 16^th District June 25 Democratic primary, he endorsed County Executive George Latimer for Congress, primarily to separate himself from the perceived anti-Israel bias of fellow Black Democrat, incumbent and now defeated Democratic Congressman Jamaal Bowman.

But in Rockland County Hasidic circles, he’s remembered as a Black who fought the financial dismemberment by Hasids of the majority Black and Hispanic East Ramapo schools, whose district headquarters is in Spring Valley.

That’s an echo of the internal political and community battles in Israel.

All in all, enough anguish for this week.

Dick Hubert, a retired television news producer-writer-reporter living in Rye Brook, has been honored with the Peabody Award, the DuPont Columbia Award and the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Journalism Award.

Editor’s Note: This column, written by Dick Hubert, represents his opinion and not that of this newspaper.