South Florida’s Sun Sentinel newspaper, which serves communities in Broward and Palm Beach Counties, has endorsed the candidacy of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. In the article explaining their decision, the paper’s editorial board writes that the upcoming election is a critical point for the United States, which they characterize as a moment when Americans can either further descend into the narcissistic near-autocracy of Trump’s regime or take a different road under the honorable, levelheaded leadership of a Biden administration.
‘[Now], as former President Barack Obama declared last week, the main question is whether the presidency will be “the custodian of this democracy” and “defend the freedoms and ideals that so many Americans marched for and went to jail for, fought for and died for.” Biden and Harris have what it takes to do that. They have the essential integrity, ability, experience and proven dedication to uphold the Constitution, serve the people, remedy our present crises, and regain respect for the government at home and abroad.’
The paper has plenty of examples, insisting that the Biden team “can be trusted to work intelligently and fairly on the nation’s long agenda of unmet needs, including control of the coronavirus, confronting climate change, restoring voting rights, and other priorities.” In contrast, the paper notes, Trump “has proved himself unfit, untrustworthy and unwilling to uphold the ideals embedded in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, or to take seriously his responsibility for the health and welfare of the American people and the lives of our armed service members overseas.”
It’s true — one of the most recent high-profile examples is Trump’s handling of the Coronavirus crisis. He has repeatedly suggested that the virus might just disappear, and he’s seemed to treat the pandemic as more of a public relations matter than a dire public health issue of life and death in which Americans could use the leadership of an actually competent commander-in-chief. His administration dragged its feet big time on getting states the resources that they desperately needed, like personal protective equipment, and more recently, when confronted about the still rising death toll, Trump dismissively said “it is what it is.”
Florida seems likely to be a key state to watch in the upcoming presidential election. In 2016, Trump won the state by a margin of just over 100,000 votes out of over 9.1 million total that were cast. In the latest RealClearPolitics average of polls, Biden leads in the state by 5 percent.
