Posted: 2024.09.10
September 10, 2024
In politics, as in war, injury at the hand of one’s opponent often happens and is generally expected. Such injury, if not fatal, could transform the wounded into a better contestant inasmuch as a paralyzing unknown – what might happen if one gets hit – has been demystified. But what is not expected and is universally not accepted, as history has shown by a multitude of examples, is for one’s own forces to stab him in the back after he is injured in a campaign to finish him off in order that he might be replaced with someone anticipated to be a stronger contestant. And so it was for President Joe Biden in early July in the aftermath of his disastrous performance in the June 27, 2024 Presidential debate against former President Donald Trump hosted by the Cable News Network (CNN).
In the televised and widely watched debate, Biden confirmed democrats’ worst fears. It was undeniably apparent to voters that Biden is cognitively unfit to serve as President and to be a candidate for another term. During the debate, Mr. Biden often rambled and was at times incoherent, his speech incomprehensible and his memory faulty. At one point, he trailed off for several seconds, seemingly unable to capture or recollect that which he wanted to say. The performance was at once embarrassing and pitiful, reminiscent of a prize fighter long past his prime who nevertheless continually enters the boxing ring for money, fame, or relevance with opponents half his age with much more strength, power, and vigor, and who pummel him into a pulp. However, Mr. Biden’s condition most assuredly was not unknown to his inner circle, elected democrats, financiers, or party bosses.
Reactions were swift. The New York Times and other news publications threw themselves into the political fray, imploring Mr. Biden to withdraw from the race. Democrats at all levels implored Mr. Biden to demonstrate his debate performance was a fluke even while, privately, they questioned whether Mr. Biden could remain his party’s nominee. Mr. Biden tried to hang on, he had his staunchest supporters defend him in public; he held public events and political rallies, and he gave television interviews admitting he is old but still capable. Still, the pressure mounted. Democrat donors came out of the shadows and announced publicly they would stop donating to the campaign so long as Mr. Biden remained the nominee. Even those who claimed to consider Mr. Biden a friend turned on him. Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the lower chamber of Congress (U.S. House of Representatives) and longtime friend of Mr. Biden, is said to have been a member of a group of prominent democrats leading the charge behind the scene to pressure Mr. Biden to quit even though her public statements seemed collegial even if restrained. Former President Barack Obama, under whom Mr. Biden served as vice president for eight years, is reported to have counseled democrats who were intent on seeing Mr. Biden withdraw. The nearly daily announcement by one elected democrat or another imploring Mr. Biden to quit seems coordinated, leading Mr. Biden to use U.S. president Harry Truman’s famous quote during a campaign stop in Nevada, “[i]f you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.”
Many of the very people pressuring Mr. Biden to quit had hosted or attended relatively recent fundraisers for him, including a very high profile one in Los Angeles with Mr. Obama on June 15, twelve days prior to the debate. It is inconceivable that they did not know about, or suspect, Mr. Biden’s diminished capacity. American motion picture actor George Clooney, who following the debacle penned an op-ed in the New York Times calling on Mr. Biden to withdraw from the race, was among them. He co-hosted the June 15 event, which he termed, “the single largest fund-raiser supporting any Democratic candidate ever.” Yet, here was Mr. Clooney, three weeks later, imploring Mr. Biden to quit. To further discredit Mr. Biden’s team’s cockamamie story that the bad debate performance was due to Mr. Biden having a cold, Mr. Clooney argued in his op-ed that the Joe Biden he saw in the debate is the same Joe Biden he saw during his fundraiser twelve days earlier. If that is true, one must wonder what it says about Mr. Clooney; he did not have the courage, it seems, all these many days after the fundraiser to share with his fellow democrat voters and the public what he knew about Mr. Biden’s reduced capacity.
In his op-ed, Mr. Clooney exhorted party leaders to take measures to convince Mr. Biden to quit the race, and he argued that Mr. Biden’s cognitive decline was “new and upsetting information”. But, in truth, the only “new and upsetting information” presented in this debacle is that “51 million people” watched the debate and saw the emperor had no clothes, potentially damaging Mr. Biden’s reelection chances – and the hope of democrats to recapture the White House. Such lack of courage masquerading as bravery is the stuff of legend in Hollywood, where people go through their entire lives playing pretend.
It is inconceivable that Mr. Biden’s condition was unknown to his inner circle, leading democrats, donors or fundraisers. More realistically, they believed 2024 could be a repeat of 2020 where, under the guise of the novel coronavirus (COVID) pandemic, they successfully kept Mr. Biden hidden from public view and from the very few news reporters with the moxie to ask probing questions that might have revealed his condition.
Assuredly, Mr. Biden’s family knew of his diminished capacity as well. Perhaps they were convinced to go along by Mr. Biden’s inner circle who appealed to their ego or their sense of duty, telling them the country needed Mr. Biden to save her from another Trump presidency. They may also have been given assurances that the campaign team would protect Mr. Biden much as they had done in 2020. In retrospect, it seems they vastly underestimated the assist given to them by the COVID pandemic during the 2020 election. With no pandemic restrictions with which to contend, hiding the candidate would not be an option in 2024.
Much has been written about the machination of democrat operatives, elected officials, elder statesmen, and financiers in the orchestrated political murder of Mr. Biden, plunging their knives into his back with such ferocity and violence that they left him with no choice but to conclude that he could not continue in the race with any realistic chance at winning. It has been widely reported that democrat party officials, insiders and leaders wanted an open contest to select Mr. Biden’s successor. Mr. Clooney floated this idea in his op-ed, writing: “We can easily foresee a group of several strong Democrats stepping forward to stand and tell us why they’re best qualified to lead this country…. Let’s hear from Wes Moore and Kamala Harris and Gretchen Whitmer and Gavin Newsom and Andy Beshear and J.B. Pritzker and others. Let’s agree that the candidates not attack one another… Then we could go into the Democratic convention next month and figure it out.”
Less, however, has been written about Mr. Biden’s view of his betrayal and what, if anything, he was prepared to do about it. But, it did not take long for Mr. Biden to showcase his resolve to teach the party leaders and fundraisers a lesson they will never forget, although that lesson is not readily apparent to democrats today. On Sunday, July 21, holed off at his private residence in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, nearly a month after his disastrous debate performance, Mr. Biden posted a letter on social media (X, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads) announcing his withdrawal from the race for president. His deliberation and decision were known only to a small cadre of family members and close advisers. Mr. Biden’s senior staff were told of the decision just one minute before the letter was posted on social media, avoiding leaks, spurning and giving traditional media the proverbial middle finger. This was not the only demonstration of revenge by Mr. Biden. To deny democrats the open contest they desired for the selection of his replacement, Mr. Biden wholeheartedly endorsed his Vice President, Kamala Harris, in whom party leaders and fundraisers had heretofore shown no faith, writing:
My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.”
With this full-throated endorsement of Ms. Harris, Mr. Biden made it all but impossible for democrat power brokers to have the open nominating contest that they wanted. Going against Ms. Harris following the President’s endorsement assuredly would have angered and alienated one of the most important voting blocks in the democrat party – Black voters. It did not take long for all of the contestants for the heretofore expected open nomination contest to fall in line. Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, Governor Gavin Newsom of California, Governor Wes Moore of Maryland, one by one, issued public statements endorsing Ms. Harris. Some of them on the same day as Mr. Biden’s announcement. Party leaders and elder statesmen followed, albeit reluctantly. Mr. Obama took longer than many to issue a public endorsement. His wife and he issued an endorsement via video five days after Mr. Biden’s announcement. No prominent democrat, it seems, was willing to commit political suicide by failing to embrace Ms. Harris publicly. The nomination was to be Ms. Harris’s. Mr. Biden had taken his revenge against the democrats. It was a stroke of genius, Machiavellian in scope and brilliant in execution. But, Mr. Biden was not yet done.
He had given democrats the candidate they did not want, the same candidate who flamed out in spectacular fashion the last time she ran for president in 2020. Her poll numbers were at three percent when she dropped out. So unpopular Ms. Harris has been that as late as September 2023 there were calls for Biden to replace her on the democrats’ ticket in 2024. In fact, The Washington Post’s David Ignatius posited in a piece on September 12, 2023 that Mr. Biden should have resisted picking Ms. Harris as his running mate in 2020 and that neither of them should run for reelection in 2024. This was nearly one year before Mr. Biden’s recent decision to drop out and endorse Ms. Harris.
Facts are a stubborn thing. Ms. Harris cannot win the 2024 presidential contest. She has too many downsides. As David Ignatius opined, “Harris has many laudable qualities, but the simple fact is that she has failed to gain traction in the country or even within her own party.” Her defeat in November, ultimately, will be Mr. Biden’s best revenge.
Democrats, buoyed by the swiftness of Ms. Harris’s ascendancy and mesmerized by the speed with which party leaders and donors have fallen in line behind her, are giddy. They are in a frenzy over her candidacy and believe, many of them, that her coronation is a foregone conclusion. But, the dynamics of the race have not materially changed. She is still the same candidate she was in 2020 and the same vice president whose term in office has been marred by frequent staff turnovers and chaos. The party’s sudden surge of enthusiasm for Ms. Harris cannot erase the fact that she cannot carry the crucial swing states needed to win the presidency. She is not likeable, she is overly rehearsed and overtly fake, and she has accomplished nothing of substance in her career (unless one counts winning elections to public office as an accomplishment). She has jumped from office to office, elevating her stature with no gain for the people who have elected her. What initiatives has Ms. Harris advanced in the many elected positions she has held? It is not hard to forget that she occupied the office of Attorney General in California. Ditto for her single term as a United States Senator representing the State of California. She spoke of her toughness on crime as a candidate for District Attorney in San Francisco but had no meaningful effect on crime as the District Attorney. As a candidate for President in 2020, she pivoted from her tough on crime persona and took on the mantle of a progressive, the cri du jour in her party. But, voters saw through the emptiness, and she was among the first democrat primary candidates to drop out of the race for president in 2020.
The idea that a person with no accomplishment – whether it be a man or a woman, of color or white, straight or gay – has a chance to be elected President of the United States because the party bosses, campaign donors, and traditional media are excited about them seems absurd. But, very smart people believe it to be so. In their view, considering Ms. Harris’s opponent, it is a near certainty. Perhaps it is because the darling of their party, Mr. Obama, once occupied the White House largely because of an electrifying speech at the 2004 Democratic convention and a prediction as an Illinois state senator that the Iraq War (2003) would go badly for the United States.
The astute political observer is gobsmacked by the discipline and boldness with which Mr. Biden executed his withdrawal plan. Away from Washington with only the most trusted members of the inner circle present, and no leaks. These characteristics, admittedly unusual for Mr. Biden, are demonstrative of his strong desire to avenge the extreme embarrassment heaped upon him by his own party in the weeks following the June 27 debate. His calculated decision to endorse Ms. Harris in terms that left no room for other presidential contenders or for party bosses to meddle is at once daring and cunning. Cunning because it advanced the nomination of a candidate he knows cannot win the general election. Her loss in November will allow him to walk out of the arena head held high, beaming with pride as the only democrat to have defeated Mr. Trump.
-The Consul Regent
The Consul Regent 
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