The drip-drip-drip of the water torture media campaign to force Joe Biden to step aside picked up steam in the last few days. First, Maureen Dowd, the weather wane of respectable centrist feminist opinion at the New York Times, delivers a well-deserved scolding for Joe Biden’s directive to make his son Hunter’s love child with a stripper into a non-person: “The president’s cold shoulder — and heart — is counter to every message he has sent for decades, and it’s out of sync with the America he wants to continue to lead.”
Joining the pile-on is Eliot Cohen in The Atlantic, with a feature “Step Aside Joe Biden.” Cohen doesn’t mince words:
He also has no business running for president at age 80. . . As president he has surrounded himself with former aides and dutiful technocrats—no peers who can look him straight in the eye and say, with the gravitas born of expertise and self-confidence, “Mr. President, I profoundly disagree.” Perhaps this is what he has always done, but it is particularly striking now. . .
Unfortunately, Vice President Kamala Harris, who has the résumé but seemingly not the political skills and heft to be a compelling presidential candidate, is a weak backfill. Moreover, if history is any guide, an ailing, declining president does not simply say, “You’re right, Doc, time for me to hand over the reins to the veep.” Rather, as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and others have done, they delay and deny, aided and abetted by families and close advisers who refuse to accept reality.
Then there’s the Alex Thompson story in Axios about Biden’s temper and erratic behavior:
Behind closed doors, Biden has such a quick-trigger temper that some aides try to avoid meeting alone with him. Some take a colleague, almost as a shield against a solo blast.
The president’s admonitions include: “God dammit, how the f**k don’t you know this?!,” “Don’t f**king bullsh*t me!” and “Get the f**k out of here!” — according to current and former Biden aides who have witnessed and been on the receiving end of such outbursts. . . Senior and lower-level aides alike can be in Biden’s line of fire. “No one is safe,” said one administration official.
[A former Senate aide] wrote that as a senator, Biden was an “egomaniacal autocrat … determined to manage his staff through fear.”
The “old man yells at clouds” caricature turns out to be accurate.
Then The Hill chimes in:
When is the optimal time for Biden to drop out of the race?
Like a magician setting up a trick in one hand while distracting the audience with the other, the Biden White House and its allies are desperately trying to distract the attention of the American people from President Biden’s age, his obvious frailty and his increasing verbal and mental gaffes.
It has now gotten to the point where I have had a number of Democrats — including staunch supporters of the president — tell me it makes them “nervous,” “uncomfortable,” “sad” or gives them a feeling of “foreboding” anytime they watch President Biden speak in public, interact with guests or walk up or down the stairs to Air Force One. . .
If Biden does drop out of the race, will he wait too long to do so? And, should that be the case, will Vice President Kamala Harris — whom few Democrats truly have confidence in — get crushed in the general election by the Republican nominee?
I still say Biden won’t be the Democratic nominee next year. And I think there’s a 50/50 chance that if Biden doesn’t drop out of his own volition, Gavin Newsom will decide some time this fall to jump in the race, with a “more in sorrow than anger” announcement that praises Biden for his good deeds, but that it’s time for a generational shift. Don’t think Newsom and his advisers aren’t weighing this possibility.
P.S. Here’s a fanciful scenario: maybe Biden resigns from office some time late this year or early next year—he’s only one tumble down the steps of Air Force One from being forced to step down—he could dangle the prospect of Kamala being the first woman president (by succession) for a few months provided she agrees to give way to a Democrat who might actually win.
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