It’s horrible when bad things happen to good people. This isn’t a story about that, this is a story about bad things happening to Democrats – think of it as evidence that karma may, in fact, exist. Or at least that God has a sense of humor. Because the corner that Democrats have painted themselves into has no good or easy way out, and the only have themselves to blame.
This doesn’t mean that Democrats are going to lose – never underestimate the Republican skill of being able to blow an election – it just means it will take extraordinary events in order to just get them back to even.
Does Joe Biden survive the week is not a crack about his age, it’s a question about his will. Sooner or later, the time will come where enough Democrats look at a shrinking calendar and poll numbers and realize there is likely not enough of the former to make up for the latter. But all of their alternatives are just as tainted by Joe Biden as Joe Biden is.
It’s a glorious mess they’ve created for themselves. That they’ve taken so much of the media with them is the icing on top. How can they get out of it?
There is no good way.
1) Biden stays. They can’t get rid of him, legally, anyway. I suppose the delegates could simply refuse to vote for him in defiance of their party’s rules. Not sure what would happen there, or what would happen if they walked out without voting for enough rounds that they got to the point where the Super Delegates get a say and they’re all free to vote how they like, but it would be fun to watch.
The problem is some state’s laws obligate delegates to vote how the primary commanded them to. It’s unlikely that the party of letting violent criminals go is going to charge hard after delegates not voting for a slightly animated corpse, but if their Attorney General is a Biden loyalist, you never know.
2) Someone who matters speaks out. It’s always funny when a few backbench Members of the House put together a letter complaining about this or that, trying to “pressure” leadership into the action they want. Unless it is all of them, or at least damn near most, these letter are political junk mail – quickly tossed out. Those who signed it might brag to their constituents about it, but it never matters. That’s all there is about Biden, so far.
There are very few people who could speak out and make it matter. Nancy Pelosi is one. I’d say Hakeem Jeffries, but he’s Pelosi’s puppet. Chuck Schumer, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. If they call for Joe to go, he won’t really have much choice.
But you have to remember that Joe has always been a nasty, vindictive person. He would go, but he could do a lot of damage on the way out the door. A decent portion of Democrats do like Joe, and would be angry at his ouster. There’s no reason to think they’d vote for the party after that.
3) Whoever comes next. Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom, were one of them to come out against Joe, could do serious damage, but it would be a suicide mission. They don’t like each other, so they’re both fighting to be seen as the most loyal Biden supporter right now. If Joe leaves on his own, they could lay claim, with varying degrees of success, to the mantle of heir apparent. But if one cracks too early and calls for Joe to go, it would likely lead to a flood of people doing the same right behind them, but they would be denounced as disloyal and opportunistic. They all are, but being labels as such would be damaging with the voters they’d need the support of.
Of these two – the obvious and only real options for replacing Biden – whoever breaks first, comes in last.
Will Democrats break? Will they bypass a black woman for a rich white man? Can they reanimate Joe to the point that he limps across the finish line? If they go convince him to withdraw as a candidate, will they force him to resign as president too? If not, how will they justify saying he’s unfit for a second term but somehow fine to be President now?
There are more questions than there are answers and they know it. And there are no good answers to the questions we do know about.
I would like nothing more than to have them keep Joe Biden on the ticket, not because I think he’d be easier to beat – though, I do – but because I want him to lose. I want one of his last memories as he drifts off into full dementia to be that American people rejected him and everything he did; that he will go down as the worst President in history. I want that to be the last thing that blends into the fog.
Joe Biden has been such a destructive force to the country, and a divisive force to Americans, that I desire he unambiguously know his presidency was the inflection point where the country recoiled in horror from his politics, his policies, his family and him.
Perhaps that’s cruel, but a man who made his name lying about his own life and his opponents, while making his fortune off exploiting the public trust, deserves nothing less. And the American Public, who’ve suffered under him, deserve at least that small measure of satisfaction.
David Hunter, townhall.com
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