In politics, as in so many fields of endeavor, timing is everything. In this election year, regarding the presidential election, the Democrats really screwed up.
It was very apparent early on that Joe Biden was losing it. By spring, it was obvious that he was getting worse; he couldn’t answer a question without wandering off into a nonsensical ramble. His flashes of unfounded anger, difficulties with finding words, and inappropriate gestures and behavior, especially around young women and children, painted a vivid picture of a man in the throes of dementia. But his administration and Democrats in Congress, along with the liberal and progressive legacy media, just kept whistling past that graveyard. “He’s fine,” they insisted, “He’s as sharp as a tack,” and “He’s beaten Donald Trump once, and he can do it again.”
Then came the first scheduled presidential debate, and all that came crashing down. But there was just one problem. Joe Biden had, in the primary elections, already sealed up the delegates required to sew up the nomination. So – a putsch it was. Joe had to go; the polls were cratering, and the Democrats found themselves in the unenviable position of having Kamala Harris being the least awful choice. Now, none other than the New York Times’s Maureen Dowd is decrying what was done to befuddled old Joe.
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd deemed President Biden’s ouster a “coup” orchestrated behind the scenes by powerful Democrats on Sunday.
“Even though it was the right thing to do, because Joe Biden was not going to be able to campaign, much less serve as president for another four years, in a fully vital way, it was a jaw-dropping putsch,” Dowd wrote.
The president announced he would be dropping out of the race for the White House at the end of July, following weeks of pressure from top Democrats, who had reportedly called on him to bow out in private. Top Democrats, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Chuck Schumer and more have repeatedly denied they were involved in a “coup” to push Biden out.
“At some point, when the polls cratered, Democratic mandarins decided to put the welfare of the party — and the country — ahead of the president’s ego, and stop catering to his self-regarding fantasy that he was the only one who could beat Donald Trump,” Dowd continued.
Again, timing. The writing was on the wall long ago; even when 2023 gave way to the election year of 2024, old Joe’s decline was obvious. That would have been the time to quietly convince him to step down, and for all we know some Democrats may well have approached him about it. Given the state he has been in for some time, it would be surprising if they had not. But the old man’s stubbornness and, we feel certain, pressure from some members of his family, who have profited mightily from Joe Biden’s terms in office, pushed back even harder.
Then came the evening when old Joe went one-on-one with Donald Trump and got shredded. After that, Joe Biden’s decline could not be denied any longer.
Things haven’t gotten better since then. The President has been strangely quiet. Granted, his administration, being all too aware of his deterioration, has been carefully managing his appearances for some months now. But when we do hear him or see him, it seems like the shock of his being ousted is making him worse. On Saturday, I wrote about how the Democrats may even move to push old Joe out of office altogether.
See Related: Will Democrats Use the 25th Amendment on Old Joe After All?
Maureen Dowd’s point is a good one; Biden was unfairly forced out of the race. He was, after all, the choice of the primary voters, and we note that Kamala Harris has received not one primary vote; she was anointed, not elected. That hardly seems, you know, democratic. But, as we have seen time and again, the Democrats are all about principals, not principles.
Here’s what will be interesting to see: As the one who is ostensibly the leading figure in the Democratic Party – although I think we all know better than that – Joe Biden will be delivering a keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. What tone will that speech take? Will Joe, in a fit of pique, resign his office and leave Kamala holding the bag? Will he even mention the coup that took him out of power? Will he take one for the team and endorse Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, the most leftist presidential ticket in the history of the republic?
Or will he just come unstuck and descend into a rambling mess? I wouldn’t rule out any possibility at this point.
In any case, the Democrat apparatchiks have had their way. Now they are stuck with Kamala Harris, and with shouts of “joy” in the campaign, Democrats are once more whistling past the graveyard. But when you’ve lost Maureen Dowd…
See Related: The Campaign of ‘Joy’ Is Over; Now We Have the Campaign of Events, My Dear Boy, Events
The Democrats pulled off their putsch. They have made their bed and are now forced to lie in it, and Kamala Harris isn’t exactly the mint on the pillow. Sooner or later she will have to face unscripted, unplanned questions from the media. Before long she will have to face Donald Trump in a debate, and she just plain isn’t any good at either. Sooner or later, as my colleague Adam Turner points out in the piece linked just above, she will have to address serious questions on serious issues, and that may well be when the tide turns. In 2020, the Democrats were able to keep Joe Biden’s basement campaign in place, citing COVID as the excuse; they don’t have that excuse any longer.
The Democratic National Convention starts Monday. Watch here for coverage; the tenor and tone of that event will tell us a lot about how the Harris/Walz ticket intends to run its campaign.
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