By MIKE MAGEE

I have always felt a kinship with EJ Dionne. We are both Boomers, though I am 4 years his senior. We share similar politics, religious origins, early Catholic school educations, fathers in health care and mothers who were teachers, deep New England roots, addiction to the written word, blessings with long marriages and children (they 3, we 4), and deep revulsion with Trump and his enablers and everything they represent.

Viewing him as measured and wise, I took special care in reading his Washington Post column yesterday, “The words about Joe Biden I never wanted to write.”

For twelve days since that first debate, I have worked to remain officially neutral on “what next to do,” and stayed focused on how to ensure a decisive (message-sending) defeat not only of Trump but Republicans up and down the ticket, so that there is no confusion that the whole cabal – Project 2025, Leonard Leo et al, the  Supreme Court’s “Doomed Crusade”, Bannon-led MAGA insurrectionists – is sufficiently devastated that it cannot remerge from the cinders.

There is no doubt that Biden’s physical and mental decline was on full view for over 50 million Americans two weeks ago. And you don’t have to be a medical historian or a prize winning journalist to recognize that the degenerative processes that are responsible for his decline are progressive (albeit possibly slowly progressive). That is to say, his decline will continue, as predictably as did Ronald Reagan’s.

But as E.J. makes clear in his opinion piece this week, “Biden’s capacity to do a ‘good job’ is not ‘what this is about.’ Donald Trump’s threat to democracy is the overriding question before the country…”

While Dionne is right that this is not “about Biden,” he understates the problem when he suggests instead that it is about Trump alone. That is no more true than to suggest that WWII was only about Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito, when in fact the challenge was far greater than that.

Stated simply, the human species in the Axis societies had gone off the rails, and channeled themselves into a death spiral. “Breaking the spell” required unprecedented force and ultimately the use of atomic bombs, followed by multi-decade investments through the Marshall Plan to reestablish civilized human societies.

President Biden limping to the finish line and repeating slight margin victories in seven swing states will not solve America’s current problem. We are too far along. As with Hitler’s Germany in the 30’s, the enemy’s course trajectory is by now visible for all to see, and it will achieve its’ Project 2025 goals and objectives if allowed. These determined radicalized leaders are more than halfway there, fueled with a religious fervor that cannot be modified by honest debate or calm logic.

Success breeds success as well for evil as for good. So far, with Biden still in power, political arsonists have achieved an immune Executive branch; a biased Judiciary with no Code of Ethics; a House of Representatives directed from Mar-a-Lago; and 14 state houses with absolute control over their citizens reproductive rights.

Clearly the problem is bigger than Trump. Project 2025’s declaration leaves little room for confusion. It states: “It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on Day One of the next conservative Administration.”

There will be no Pearl Harbor to wake us from our sleep, or galvanize our clear majorities that know in their hearts that something has gone very, very wrong. That Presidential debate was our final warning.  Time’s up. As Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said this weekend “This is a really critical week. I do think the clock is ticking.”

What then is the formula for an overwhelming defeat of the Trump Reich? Three pillars: Energy, Enthusiasm, Women-Led.

Mike Magee MD is a Medical Historian and regular THCB contributor. He is the author of CODE BLUE: Inside America’s Medical Industrial Complex (Grove/2020)