What a crazy two weekends. We came within an inch of losing both Presidential candidates in a little over a week after the failed assassination attempt on the former President and the failed candidacy of the current President. For Biden, though, it was political suicide—actually more like assisted political suicide.
A rightfully panicked Democratic Party has finally pushed—actually more like shoved—President Biden out of the 2024 race for the Presidency. The President made his announcement Sunday afternoon on X (formerly Twitter)—and said he will speak to the nation later this week to provide “more detail about his decision.” But I think we can figure it out for ourselves.
While initially defiant, having vehemently resisted an ever mounting deluge of calls for him to step down—and telling George Stephanopoulos during an interview on ABC News that it would take “an act of God” to force him out of the race—Biden finally abandoned his presidential bid on Sunday afternoon.
While it wasn’t an “act of God,” for Democrats it came close—as whispers from the party’s deity, former President Barack Obama, were likely the final nail in the Biden candidacy’s coffin. The Washington Post reported on Thursday that “Former president Barack Obama has told allies in recent days that President Biden’s path to victory has greatly diminished and he thinks the president needs to seriously consider the viability of his candidacy.” Obama was joined by the rest of the Democrat’s Holy Trinity—Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer—and it was over. Amen.
“Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats,” Biden tweeted after he announced his withdrawal from the race, “it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.” He then said that selecting Harris as his Vice President and running mate was “the best decision I’ve made.” Well, if that was his best decision, that certainly explains a lot.
Hidin’ Biden
Last Saturday I was preparing a post that I had planned to title “Hidin’ Biden,” when it was upstaged by the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. After the fallout from the debate, Biden had finally crawled out of his bunker and begun interacting—quite unconvincingly—with the media and the public in an attempt to make the case that he was fit and capable to be—and run for—President.
Over the past few years Biden and his advisors have embarked on what turns out to have been an ultimately flawed—and purposefully misleading—strategy of keeping the President’s deteriorating condition and diminished capacity a secret from the American people. But one has to ask, how do you think you’re going to get away with hiding the President of the United States?
For anyone who even casually follows the news, it’s obvious that President Biden rarely—and likely following the orders of his advisors—made anything other than short, scripted appearances. He often read a brief statement, turned around, and walked away—as frustrated reporters shouted questions at him. Trump, on the other hand—and likely to the dismay of his advisors—gives frequent and unscripted appearances and off-topic remarks, all the while shouting questions AT reporters.
Two weeks ago the Washington Post published an article titled Debate brings scrutiny of whether aides shielded signs of Biden’s aging, that brought renewed, and long overdue, attention to the role that President Biden’s staff, and his wife, have played in keeping him from public view.
“Now, after his halting performance at a debate against Trump brought questions about Biden’s mental sharpness and physical stamina to the forefront,” reporters Yasmeen Abutaleb, Tyler Pager and Aaron Schaffer wrote, “Biden’s senior aides face worries among fellow Democrats and sharp accusations from Republicans that they took steps to conceal the effect the president’s aging has had on his ability to carry out his duties.”
Biden’s inner circle had made him increasingly unavailable to reporters—and even to members of his own Cabinet. According to the University of California’s American Presidency Project, for example, the number of solo press conferences Biden had given dwindled from 6 in 2021, to 5 in 2022, to 3 in 2023. Until the mostly disastrous press conference following the debate, he hadn’t held even one in all in 2024.
“Many Democratic lawmakers said they were stunned by Biden’s condition in the debate,” the Wall Street Journal reported, “in part because their contact with him has been so limited over the past three years.” Cabinet officials “have privately complained for years that they didn’t have enough contact with the president and his senior team, who centralized power in the White House and directed much of the administration’s policy activity.”
Yet while feigning surprise, Democrat’s concerns over Biden’s fitness go back to at least October 2021. “President Biden had just finished trying to persuade a group of congressional Democrats to pass a $1 trillion infrastructure bill,” reports the Wall Street Journal in today’s [Monday’s] edition, “In 30 minutes of remarks on Capitol Hill, Biden had spoken disjointedly.” A frustrated Nancy Pelosi, then the House Speaker, was said to have taken the microphone “to articulate what Biden had been trying to say.”
Representative Dean Phillips (D-MN), part of the party’s leadership, and the only mainstream Democrat brave enough to challenge Biden in the Democratic Primary, said “It was the first time I remember people pretty jarred by what they had seen.”
Last year I finally finished reading the Wolf Hall trilogy—a series of novels about the intrigues of Henry VIII’s royal court, and the machinations of his courtiers to prop up and flatter the king so that they themselves might continue to cling to power. Hundreds of years later, and things haven’t changed much in the halls of power. “The resistance to reality of Mr. Biden, his family, staff, White House aides and panicked Democrats resembles more than anything the spectacle of weak, addled monarchs in centuries past,” wrote Daniel Henninger in the Wall Street Journal, “who clung to the throne while their coteries maneuvered to preserve power and perquisites.”
What did they know, and when did they know it?
If you’re old enough—as I am—to remember the impeachment proceedings against president Richard Nixon, the entire effort to impeach him could be summed up in the question then asked by fellow Republican and US Senator Howard Baker. “What did the President know,” Baker wondered, “and when did he know it?”
I think that’s a fair question to ask now, but with slight amendment: “What did the President, his staff, and party leaders know, and when did they know it?” Can we judge Biden for the infirmities of age? No. But it’s fair to judge him on his ability to capably perform the duties and responsibilities of the Presidency. And we can judge him—and those around him, including Democratic party leaders, and much of the media—for the years-long ruse and pretense that all was well.
There have been signs for years now of the President’s diminished capacity—and while we might feel for him as a fellow human being—we shouldn’t let that distract us from the reality that he was, at least in name, the President of the United States. It begs the question, “who was running the White House?” I guess we’ll have to wait for the tell-all White House memoirs to find out.
Perhaps an even more important question, at least for now is, “why did it come to this?” It’s not that party leaders turned a blind eye to it—it is, instead, that they hoped to pull the wool over everyone else’s. Barton Swain, an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal, admonished Democrats for “misleading their own voters.” And Congressman Dean Phillips, who, as mentioned above, was the only Democrat to challenge the President for the party’s nomination, complained that “it became clear that I wasn’t competing only against the president but against a political machine designed to prevent competition, suppress challengers, and silence dissent.” It, said Phillips, “reflected a misplaced loyalty—one directed toward a person and party rather than principle and patriotism.”
Biden’s departure from the race has been lauded by the New York Times as “courageous,” and by Ruth Marcus, a Washington Post Associate Editor, as “heroic.” You know what would have actually been “courageous” and “heroic?” (pause for dramatic effect, rhetorical question) If the President, party leaders, and Biden’s inner circle hadn’t perpetrated this royal scam on us in the first place, and the President had bowed out gracefully—while he still could. Maybe even before the primaries. Biden only quit when it was clear he was defeated.
That is neither courageous nor heroic. That’s hubris.