There Will Be No Stepping Back

The Democrats Have Screwed Themselves—Bigly

To put it bluntly, the Democrats are screwed.

To put it even more bluntly, the Democrats have screwed themselves.

Ever since Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance on June 27th, the calls have been growing for Joe Biden to step aside. Corporate media didn’t even wait for Biden to make it back to bed after the debate before calling for him to step down and not run for re-election.

“Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election,” New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman wrote Friday. “Biden has been a friend” for decades, Friedman wrote, but “it’s time for Joe to keep the dignity he deserves and leave the stage at the end of this term.”

Friedman is not wrong. Nor is he alone.

From the New York Times to the Financial Times to the Wall Street Journal to the Atlantic, left-leaning columnists — many of whom have been covering Biden for years — admitted that the president didn’t just lose the debate: He confirmed his party’s greatest fears that his advanced age had rendered the election unwinnable for the Democrats if he remains their candidate.

Quite a few Democratic insiders are climbing on the anti-Biden bandwagon as well.

"There is a sense of shock at how he came out at the beginning of this debate. How his voice sounded. He seemed a little disoriented," David Axelrod, who served as a top White House and campaign official for former President Barack Obama, said on CNN.

"There are going to be discussions about whether he should continue," Axelrod added.

Even independent media superstar Tucker Carlson has weighed in, calling for Biden to resign the Presidency and let Kamala Harris take the reins for the remainder of his term.

Alas for the poor Democrats, all of this is wishful thinking.

Should Joe Biden resign? Probably. A man with advancing dementia should not be sitting behind the Resolute Desk—and there is no denying that Joe Biden has advancing dementia.

If Biden will not resign (and at this point, he appears to not even be considering it, as his family is rallying around him and encouraging him to stay in the race), should Kamala Harris exercise her options under the 25th Amendment and assume the office of President for the remainder of Biden’s term? Probably. The reasons are the same: a man with advancing dementia should not be sitting behind the Resolute Desk.

Unfortunately, Joe Biden resigning and withdrawing from the upcoming election does not solve any of the Democrats’ problems. If anything, it magnifies them.

The first problem the Democrats have is that Biden, as the incumbent, ran the table during the primary season, hoovering up virtually all the delegates. While Biden can step aside, all that does is release the 3,900 or so delegates pledged to him from the primaries (and there are 4,000 delegates total). It does not transfer those delegates to any other candidate.

If Biden were to drop out between now and when he's scheduled to be formally nominated in August, it would create a free-for-all among Democrats since there is no mechanism for him or anyone else to anoint a chosen successor.

It takes a majority of the roughly 4,000 pledged delegates to win the party’s nomination. Biden’s won 3,900 of them. Under recent reforms, the party’s more than 700 superdelegates — Democratic lawmakers and dignitaries — are allowed to vote only if no one wins a majority of pledged delegates on the first ballot, so their votes could be crucial in a contested convention. 

Because Biden is the incumbent, he ran without serious opposition.

Because Biden is the incumbent, there is no clear successor for the top spot on the Democrat ticket should he step aside. Even if he were to resign and let Kamala drive for the remainder of his term, that would not give her a slot on the ticket.

If Joe Biden steps aside, with or without resigning, the Democrats are looking at an open convention, which would be a free-for-all for any Democrat who wants a shot at the Oval Office.

Since Biden's opponents all won effectively no delegates throughout the Democratic nominating process, there'd be a virtual clean slate heading into the convention, and the decision would likely come down to the convention delegates who were initially pledged to Biden.

Biden would have some influence over his pledged delegates, but ultimately, they can vote as they please so candidates would likely campaign aggressively to win over each individual delegate.

Mind you, this is not speculation about what might happen if Biden steps aside. This is what unquestionably will happen at the convention if Biden steps aside.

Complicating matters further is the Democrats’ plan for conducting a virtual nomination of Joe Biden ahead of the convention, to sidestep the Ohio deadline for placing a candidate on the November ballot. If Biden steps aside, a virtual nomination process becomes a virtual impossibility.

The situation for the Democrats only gets worse from there. If Joe Biden steps aside, the logical “heir” to his spot atop the ticket is Vice President Kamala Harris. For the Democrats, however, Harris is still a potentially worse alternative to an addled Joe Biden. As of this writing, the addled Joe Biden still enjoys better betting odds for winning in November than Kamala Harris, although both are getting spanked by Donald Trump.

Note, however, that Harris has only risen slightly while Biden has fallen precipitously. Kamala Harris is not perceived as a realistic candidate for the Oval Office, even after nearly four years as Vice President.

Kamala Harris enjoys the singular distinction of being even less liked than Joe Biden.

According to the RealClearPolitics poll aggregates, Harris is viewed favorably by only 38.7% of voters. Joe Biden is viewed favorably by 40.3% of voters, and Donald Trump is viewed favorably by 42.4% of voters.

While the numbers are sure to continue to fluctuate, at present an addled Joe Biden is less of an albatross to the Democratic Party than Kamala Harris.

Nor is this likely to change. Kamala has particular baggage because she is the Vice President. We do well to recall that, in the wake of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s choice not to prosecute Biden for mishandling classified documents, Harris was positioned by the White House and the media as a “backup” for Joe Biden.

Why Not "President Kamala"?

Yet this positioning of Kamala Harris as essential to Biden’s re-election begs another question: Why not advance Harris herself as the Democratic standard-bearer for the fall election, given the questions about Biden’s mental fitness that seemingly refuse to go away?

A big part of that answer is that Kamala herself has the unenviable baggage of being seen as even less popular than Joe Biden—and that makes her problematic as a Biden replacement.

Perversely, another part of that answer may be that building up Kamala Harris as one capable to assume the duties of President while being a loyal and supportive Vice President is one of the reasons Robert Hur’s Special Counsel report does not fade away. Any positioning of Kamala Harris as a “backup” invariably brings attention back to the reality made plain by Hur that Joe Biden very likely is in need of such a backup. Thus Kamala herself is becoming a constant reminder that the Special Counsel documented Joe Biden’s cognitive deficits even as she works to rebut Special Counsel’s assertions about those deficits.

Nor can we overlook Special Counsel Hur’s rationale for not preferring charges against Joe Biden: he was and is too addled to stand trial.

Special Counsel Finds President Too Old To Be Charged In Documents Case

Despite having amassed evidence of the same conduct for which Donald Trump was indicted, Robert Hur believed criminal charges were inappropriate—in large part because he believed Biden could successfully present himself at trial as having “poor memory” (emphasis mine).

In addition. Mr. Biden's memory was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017, and in his interview with our office in 2023. And his cooperation with our investigation, including by reporting to the government that the Afghanistan documents were in his Delaware garage, will likely convince some jurors that he made an innocent mistake, rather than acting willfully—that is, with intent to break the law—as the statute requires.

Because Biden’s memory was so limited during his FBI interview, Robert Hur concluded that, if the case proceeded to trial, Biden would present himself as essentially a doddering old fool, and thus escape conviction (emphasis mine).

We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory. Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him—by then a former president well into his eighties—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.

In other words, Biden successfully persuaded Robert Hur that he really is a doddering old fool. President Biden successfully made “Dementia Joe” a legal defense.

This was the state of national discourse surrounding Joe Biden’s mental condition five months ago. The June 27th debate proved one thing beyond any doubt: Robert Hur’s assessment of Joe Biden was spot on.

For Kamala Harris and every other Administration insider, this begs a very awkward question: why did Harris not invoke the 25th Amendment in February if not earlier, given Biden’s obvious cognitive deficits? If Biden’s cognitive decline was as apparent to Hur in February as it was to the nation on June 27th, it was apparent to Kamala Harris well before February, and yet Harris failed to act.

Not only would Trump seize on Harris’ failure to act during the fall campaign, but any other Democrat with eyes on the Oval Office could use Harris’ failure as a talking point for pushing her aside and taking the nomination for himself or herself.

Not only do the Democrats have to contend with an open convention floor fight if Biden steps aside, it is a near certainty that the resulting free-for-all would drag into the spotlight the degree to which the Administration has concealed Biden’s condition. Given that corporate media is already turning on Joe Biden and has never liked Kamala Harris, and given that alternative media is far more supportive of Donald Trump than either Biden or Harris, it would be a most remarkable act of forbearance for corporate media not to give into its reflexive “if it bleeds, it leads” mantra. Corporate media would almost certainly play the convention chaos to the hilt, simply for ratings.

The result would be convention chaos worse than 1968 when the Democrats were thrown into disarray as a result of Lyndon Johnson’s abrupt withdrawal from the election, particularly if Harris is passed over for the nomination.

It is hard to imagine a floor fight that isn’t contentious at best and rancorous at worst, particularly for a political organization whose big tent contains a sometimes motley collection of liberals, centrists and progressives — voters passionately supportive of Israel and a vocal minority opposed to Biden’s continued aid of the Jewish state — communities of color, as well as many white suburbanites.

One clear factor that would be sure to figure into the chaos is the reality that, if Harris exercises the 25th Amendment now and if the Democrats in Congress support her, is the cliched question “What did they know about Biden’s dementia and when did they know it?” It would be absurd to think Donald Trump wouldn’t seize the moment and talk up the level of corruption and mendacity that would be in stark relief at the highest echelons of the Democratic party.

If Harris invokes the 25th Amendment now, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries get dragged into the Biden dementia debate kicking and screaming, with no way to get out of it. No Democrat—not Harris, not Schumer, not Jeffries—dare admit the obvious: they have known about Biden’s cognitive decline all along and chosen to do nothing about it. For the Democratic leadership, the safe strategy is still to pretend Joe Biden is fine and leave him in place as the 2024 Democratic nominee.

As it stands, there is sure to be a good deal of chaos injected into the fall campaign, if only because the Democrats’ other colossal blunder—their failed “lawfare” strategy to neutralize President Trump—has collapsed spectacularly in the wake of two pivotal Supreme Court rulings, leaving Joe Biden’s mental state as the issue for the fall campaign.

Unintended Consequences: The Immunity Ruling Makes Biden's Dementia The Center Of This Election

As much as it seemingly “makes sense” for the Democrats to push Joe Biden aside, the political reality is that, given Robert Hur’s Special Counsel report and Biden’s June 27th debate performance, the best scenario for the Democrats is still to stay the course with Biden. Even though Biden will likely lose to Donald Trump come November, there is less collateral damage likely to hit other Democrats by leaving Biden in place than by changing him at this late date.

This may yet change. We probably should anticipate the situation changing. Democratic backbenchers in Congress have little to lose by speaking out against Biden’s continued candidacy, and might even gain some respect from the voters for having the “courage” to speak out against the ongoing conspiracy of silence, and that means we should expect to hear more Congressmen calling for Biden to step aside.

However, until Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries joins their number, or until someone gets Jill Biden to finally persuade Joe Biden to step aside and sail peacefully off into a dementia-driven sunset, the Democrats are stuck with Joe Biden as their 2024 nominee. The personal political costs to the people still able to influence the situation have not risen to the point where risking an eleventh-hour change in the nominee is not the worst-case scenario.

To be blunt, the Democrats have screwed themselves—bigly.