Off The Bench Baseball Endorses Joe Biden for President of the United States
Why is a (mostly) baseball blog publicly endorsing a political candidate? Because nothing happens in a vacuum, we don’t ‘stick to sports,’ and because it’s important.
For the past 4 years, President Donald J. Trump has made clear to us at Off The Bench and to, we believe, any thinking person, that his motivations are personal, that he is incapable of acting with the best interests of the nation at heart and that he lacks the temperament to lead.
President Trump has ignored and denigrated the science of climate change-by itself an utterly disqualifying fact- risking the continued well being of every American, not to mention the continued normal functioning of baseball around the country.
He has unequivocally and catastrophically failed to adequately respond the COVID-19 pandemic. The US has 4% of global population yet 20% of global infections and have lost nearly 275,000 of our friends, families, and neighbors. Much less consequentially, our failure to handle the pandemic with even a modicum of competence cost us 102 MLB regular season games, pitchers hitting, and the integrity of extra innings and 9 inning games.
Aside from the big stuff, of which we could go on, there’s the small, under the radar disasters of the Trump Administration that will take years or decades to fix and must end immediately. Trump has disgraced the office of the presidency, he has decimated the federal workforce, and undermined decades of work across the government. He has politicized the national security apparatus that keeps us safe, bombarded us with lies, big and small, enabled and encouraged the worst and most odious aspects of our society like racism, misogyny, and anti-semitism, and facilitated the separation of families and caging of small children.
In short, Donald Trump is like the personality of John Rocker and Curt Schilling, the competence and trustworthiness of Jamie McCourt or the Wilpons, and the thinly vailed ulterior motives of Rob Manfred all rolled into one, with the nuclear codes.
For the good of the nation and everyone in it, including OTBB and the MLB, he, and those that placed party over country and sold their supposed ‘principles’ down the river to enable his lawlessness, irresponsibility, and corruption, must be voted out convincingly on November 3rd.
His opponent, Vice President Joe Biden, is the right man to replace him.
Biden is the embodiment of decency, respect, and thoughtfulness. While he may not personally hold every policy position we’d prefer or advocate for, we are confident that he will empower smart, well qualified, honest people throughout the federal bureaucracy- a welcome and refreshing change.
It is clear to us that Biden will act in the best interests of the nation and begin the process of restoring the respect our country has forfeited the last 4 years.
We trust Joe Biden to follow the science on pandemic response and get us back to normal as quickly as possible. We trust him to follow the science on other environmental threats as well and take the actions necessary to protect our way of life.
We wholeheartedly endorse Joe Biden for President and Kamala Harris for Vice-President and encourage a vote in their favor.
