Let’s start with an aside: Happy birthday to Joe Biden, 81 years young. As it seems to be every year, he remains six days older than I am, and he is gearing up for another presidential run, something that frankly has never occurred to me. But I must add that an old friend (you know who you are, obviously) who I have known since college and who is already 81 has just announced that he is running for the Florida state legislature on the Libertarian ticket. Now, I doubt that a Libertarian will win his election, but I do think that it blunts any criticism that he has of Biden on account of age. I am sure being a Florida state representative is as hard a job as running the country. I wish him luck and – if anyone can figure out a way that I can vote for him absentee – I will.

Now, for Argentina. I have never been to Argentina, and would love to go there. I feel an affinity for two reasons stemming from my childhood. My grandparents used to go to Miami for a couple of weeks in the winter, and made friends with a couple from Buenos Aires. Their daughter was getting married and my grandparents debated whether to take a trip to Buenos Aries for the wedding. I was probably 6 or 7, and tried to get them to go, but they didn’t. And then, when I started to collect stamps at about age 8 or 9, I had all these stamps with pictures of Eva Peron. I wasn’t used to seeing women on stamps and that intrigued me, too.

At any rate, Argentina always seemed like a nice place. Pleasant. Big cities. Beautiful countryside. Mountains. What could be bad? It turned out a lot could be bad and, economically and politically, it often was. And it has been such a mystery – Argentina seemed to have everything it needed, but it could never quite put it all together. If I were 40 years younger, and fluent in Spanish, I would like to study Argentina. No one has really been able to figure it out.

The post-Covid years have not been kind to Argentina. We complain about inflation here when it goes above 3%, and in fact it went as high as 7%. But in Argentina, inflation this year has been 140%. Just for one example. Half the population is considered to be living in poverty, for another.

At any rate, Argentina had a presidential election yesterday. The winner was a younger Donald Trump. Javier Milei is in his 50s, he is a former TV personality, and he is a far right right winger. His platform: get rid of the central bank (Argentina’s Fed), peg the currency to the US dollar, outlaw abortion, gut government spending, slash welfare, eliminate several government agencies (like the ministries of culture, health, women and education), liberalize gun ownership, and more. His vice-president is a woman from a military family, who wants to shutter the museum that memorializes those thousands of Argentinians who “disappeared” during the years of military dictatorship.

Former/future President Trump and former/future Brazilian president Bolsinaro have both praised the election results. The pre-election polling showed it to be a close race, with Milei projected to win by a small margin. In fact, he won 56% to 44%.

For the Democrats who want to ignore the current and consistent polling showing a slim popular vote victory for Mr. 78 over Mr. 81, this should be a clear warning. The world is not what we would like it to be, and we must adapt our tactics to keep it from falling further down the proverbial rat hole. Time for President Biden to graciously bow out, and for the Democrats to get together (perhaps without a great deal of public oversight) and select a new candidate for the 2024 presidential election.

How many times must I say that?

Ending with another aside: has anyone else noticed that the NYT is changing from a daily news vehicle to more of a magazine, with articles that reflect general issues, but are not necessarily germane to the day of publication? Today, for example, there’s a front page article on 30 year mortgage loans, and internal front section articles on Morocco’s choices in how to rebuild after a major earthquake and how they are still looking for survivors after the terrible storm in Acapulco, climate changes in Death Valley, the “iron monkeys” no longer in Harlem, a mother who finds her son’s grave in a pauper’s cemetery, a cancer victim who is providing posthumously help to other cancer victims. All interesting, to be sure, but not “news”.

At the same time, the Washington Post has announced that it is cutting 240 jobs and trimming back its expenditures.

Without the Times and Post operating at full throttle (is that a term that works here?), how will we keep up with anything? Most other newspapers have already failed to meet their responsibilities.