Washington and the media are surprisingly quiet today about the Biden drama. No doubt journalists are working the phones hard with their sources, but there seem to be no new breathless headlines or concrete news about Democrat “panic” or behind-closed-door machinations to force Slow Joe out of the race. Have leading Democrats thrown in the towel, and realized they can’t get rid of Biden? Or are Democratic insiders being unusually disciplined in not talking to the media while the wheels are turning? Watch the Sunday morning news shows for clues. That’s where Washington often talks to itself, and people float trial balloons or send authorized signals.
I have a theory of the case. I don’t think the debate was an elaborate or conspiratorial set-up to check Biden’s condition and then set in motion a plan to remove him. But I do think congressional Democrats, who had held the line for Biden while knowing full well that he is senile, held their fire until about 10 minutes into the debate, and started calling journalists to tell them to do an about-face and report Biden’s incapacity and the panic inside the party.
Recall how CNN’s John King came storming out of the gate immediately after the debate ended:
“Right now, there is a deep, a wide, and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party. It started minutes into the debate, and it continues right now. It involves party strategists and involves elected officials. It involves fundraisers, and they’re having conversations about the President’s performance, which they think was abysmal, which they think will hurt other people down the party on the ticket. They’re having conversations about what they should do about it. Some of those conversations include: Should we go to the White House and ask the president to step aside? Should prominent Democrats go public with that call?”
“Started minutes into the debate, and continues right now.” There’s an important clue in this fragment: “Involves elected officials.” Which ones? Obviously this has to mean members of the House and Senate, and maybe a governor or two. I speculate that many of them—Schumer, Pelosi, Hakim Jeffries??—started making frantic phone calls to King and other friendly media figures and told them to turn on Biden.
Keep in mind a basic fact known to political science geeks like me, namely, that there are distinct institutional wings of each political party—an executive wing, and a congressional or legislative wing. They may share a governing ideology, but they have different self-interests. Members of Congress typically have long careers, while presidents and their appointees are only around for eight years at the most. Uppermost in Chuck Schumer’s mind is keeping a Democratic majority in the Senate, and a humiliating Biden defeat in November threatens that. No Hill Democrat wants to go through a 1980-style wipeout, with Biden reprising Jimmy Carter’s ballot box performance. Keep in mind that Schumer was first elected to the House in 1980.
The incentive structure for the White House staff, cabinet members, and the Democrat client groups who get their lucre from the executive branch is quite different. They are happy to prop up Biden, and in fact a feeble Biden is better for them, as they get to run wild without adult supervision.
So the civil war on the left just got real. On the one side is the vanity of the Bidens alongside the self-interest of executive staff, and on the other is the interest of the congressional wing in not getting wiped out in November. Go very long on popcorn futures.
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