Joe Biden‘s handlers took no risks, whisking the president from the White House and all view of the public for nearly a week, bunkering down in Camp David to train the incumbent for his first debate against former President Donald Trump for the 2024 election. His campaign planned a staggering $50 million in ad buys before the CNN debate, building up momentum both on social media and with his surrogates.
The result was a cataclysmic failure.
His voice sounded as raspy as a frontman waking up 12 hours after a bender on a tour bus. His gaze was wizened and his eyes unfocused as he abruptly trailed off during incoherent detours. Midway through an early answer, Biden declared, “We finally beat Medicare,” only to stare off into space and wait for Jake Tapper to save his own face and the rest of our common decency.
The panic within the Democratic Party is “deep, wide, and very aggressive,” according to CNN’s John King. Eugene Daniels over at Politico reported that party operatives are calling for open conventions and blasting his disjointed answers. Van Jones admitted the quiet part out loud, that “time” still remains for the party to pivot to a new way forward.
But the caveat, as Jones notes, is if Biden will “allow” the party to do that.
It’s less that this is the face that launched a thousand ships —
But rather that Democrats are in a catch-22 at least as old as the presidency of his former boss. The preternatural charisma of former President Barack Obama was a boon to the coffers and mythology of the intersectional project, but like a black hole, Obama’s popularity left the rest of the back benches in the dark. Hillary Clinton, who was nearly 70 years old on Election Day 2016, was Obama’s hand-picked successor to cement his legacy as a revolutionary. Appointing the First Woman President was more important than visiting Wisconsin or finding swing-state senators to prioritize the white working class alongside the Democratic donor class.
The grand irony of Biden’s presidential obsession with elitism and identity politics is that he was the normie of the Obama White House, rejected by the Ivy League graduates and sidelined from 2016 due to his own personal traumas. Although he specifically cleaned house in the 2020 primary by running away from the socialism chic of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and the “Squad,” Biden fell for the real big lie of 2020: that demographics are destiny. To secure the winning endorsement of Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC), Biden publicly promised to appoint a black woman as his running mate, which narrowed the contest down to a handful of woman, coronating the sole black woman in the Senate, Kamala Harris.
In an alternate universe, Biden could have appointed a safe and empty suit, an older running mate who wouldn’t threaten his own presidency in the same rationale that Obama appointed Biden himself in 2008. But in the intersectional warfare of the Democratic Party, Biden inadvertently made himself indispensable: The only possible way the party’s fragile coalition can survive Biden stepping aside is if Harris takes his place.
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In what universe would the Congressional Black Caucus allow Biden to step aside and the party to replace the top of the ticket with Pete Buttigieg, let alone Govs. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) or Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI). The first female vice president, let alone the first black and Asian one, cannot be leapfrogged by a white man or, in the relative moral stakes of intersectionality, a white woman.
If Thursday’s debate meltdown were a mere matter of Biden’s senility, the solution would be obvious: Replace Biden with any other competent, center-left career politician with or without a convicted criminal for a son. But the party faithful understand the religion will not allow a deviation from the succession, and that means Biden or Kamala or bust.