Dear Mr. President: For the good of the country, would you please retire?

Dear Joe – can I call you Joe? Great, now that that's settled, there's two more words you really need to hear from someone, because it doesn't sound like you're getting the message from within your circle of friends, family and advisors.

Those two words? It's time. 

In truth it was time after the midterms, as that would've been the ideal moment to pass the torch to the next generation of leaders who'd have had over a year to get their campaigns fired up going into 2024, but like another active senior in a leadership role who I recently wrote about in this space, Pete Carroll, an unexpectedly better result in 2022 meant hanging on a year too long.

And now? Well, the numbers speak for themselves, and I don't mean the 100,000-plus "Uncommitted" voters in Michigan, which is an incredibly important state in electoral vote terms since it's one of the few remaining "swing" states anymore. Having lived there myself for my four years of college I can also tell you it's a microcosm for the entire country in the way that it's diverse but also divided, geographically (hello Upper Peninsula) but also economically, culturally (except where the Same Old Lions are concerned), and of course racially. I've been on Eminem's 8-Mile Road and it was exactly as he described it.

While there's much to say about the Uncommitted along these lines, this is ultimately a distraction from the fact that about 1.1 million people voted in the Republican primary – over 300,000 more than for the Democratic ballot. In a state you won, Joe, by 150,000 votes in 2020. 

Now granted it was a primary so the final vote turnout will be much higher in November for both parties, but before you dismiss this let's look at some previous Michigan primaries, which show just how significant this gap is. In 2020, you won soundly with 840,000 votes out of close to 1.6 million cast (the next closest, Bernie Sanders, was 270,000 behind). The GOP's primary might as well have been uncontested so they didn't muster even 700,000, almost all of which went to you-know-who. Four years later, the script has been flipped. 

But you'll say that's not a fair comparison because now you're the incumbent. All right, how about 2016, when there was no incumbent: 1.2 million for the blue team, and oh what's this? 1.3 million for the red team. And we all know what happened in November that year. Now you'll say that's not a fair comparison either because you're the incumbent and your challenger isn't, but as you know when there was a similar situation in 2012 the Democrats didn't have a primary in Michigan. The GOP did and they were right around 1 million. Obama won the general election, albeit with – oh here's that number again – 300,000 fewer votes than before. He had such a massive majority in 2008 (which is hard to fathom now for how divided we are) that he could afford that. You, do not. And if you lose Michigan, it's over. 

It's time. Announce your retirement, and then do something radical: Hold a national primary, do it online if you have to, and pledge your delegates and your campaign funds to the winner. If Trump still wins so be it, the voters will have decided under our system that that's what they want, and that's why we have elections, but at least the people will be given something new to think about first. Do this for the good of the country, Joe, because we can't take another 2020.