With members of Congress returning to the hill today from the July 4 recess, President Biden has come out swinging. In hopes of staving off more expected Democratic defections, Biden is insisting he isn’t going anywhere.
In a letter to members, Biden touted his overwhelming sweep of the Democratic primaries and asked, “How can we stand for democracy in our nation if we ignore it in our own party?”
On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Biden insisted that the calls for him to drop out have been driven by elites. “Run against me,” he dared his critics. “Go ahead — Challenge me at the convention.”
The statements are unlikely to reassure anybody who has doubts about his ability to run. The letter was likely written by staff and in the phone interview, Biden was clearly reading at least portions of his answers from a script – at one point the sound of shuffling papers could even be heard.
Nonetheless, if Biden is determined to dig in, having won 3,896 of the 3,929 delegates that were up for grabs in the primaries, there isn’t a plausible path to ousting him. A lot of people are starting to raise the non-binding language from the DNC that, “Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.” So, yes, “good conscience” isn’t legally binding. But getting nearly 2,000 pledged delegates to feel justified in voting against Biden is going to require a civil war.
Realistically, Democrats need him to cooperate to have a shot at unifying the party around a replacement.
If Democrats are stuck with Biden, though, they are in a pickle. The class of liberals in the media, on TV panels, in op-ed pages – as well as several members of Congress publicly and many more privately – have made statements questioning Biden’s ability to run if not outright calling on him to drop out. So how do they pivot to making the case that he should be elected to serve until he’s 86?
Since they cannot plausible argue that he is fit to serve another four years, they will play into fears of a second term for Donald Trump and try to reassure people not to worry, because he isn’t really running the country, and won’t be in the second term.
This is what every pro-Biden argument boils down to that isn’t straight up nonsense about him being in better shape than people half his age.
In the past week, we’ve been treated to a flood of stories about how the White House is controlled by staffers. Representative Ro Khanna, a Biden surrogate, reassured the New York Times after the debate, “We have a great team of people that will help govern. That is what I’m going to continue to make the case for.” Jeh Johnson, a former Secretary of Homeland Security under Obama, said, “A presidency is more than just one man and one woman. It’s an administration.”
These are the sorts of arguments that every Democrat and ally in the media will be making should Biden survive as the nominee. And it’s scandalous.
The fact that Biden and his allies were able to get this far by gaslighting everybody about his mental decline, and the difficulty Democrats have in dumping him now, is a demonstration of how unlikely it is that they would ever pursue the 25th Amendment option unless he is totally incapacitated. But as the Biden experience shows, there can be a long decline before somebody gets to the point at which he literally cannot even pretend to function. Which means, the argument – whether stated implicitly or explicitly – is that a vote for Biden is not actually a vote for Biden, but for others around him to control the presidency.
Letting unelected aides or family members run the country rather than the elected president is the exact opposite of saving democracy.