No sooner had the Democrats begun to rejoice over former President Donald Trump’s guilty verdict in the hush money case than the rumors started to percolate in the media and political circles: Biden might have gained a few points on Trump but he clearly won’t be able to make it to finish line as his mental state continues to worsen by the week and perhaps even by the day. The Democratic leadership will replace Biden as its presidential nominee and march on as if there was nothing at all irregular about this.
There is indeed talk and I would encourage any of you to watch this encapsulation of the rumors from my friend Clayton Morris, the former Fox & Friends anchor who now co-hosts, with his journalist wife Natali, one of the most popular political news shows on the internet, “Redacted."
But even as the talk swirls that Biden won’t make it, the Democratic “communications” team is continuing to try to convince you that the president is still the sharpest tack in the box and raring to get on the campaign trail. They just can’t keep up with him.
Well, if you watched any of the coverage of the G-7 summit in Rome, you would have noticed the singularly meretricious Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau doing his narcissistic best to be the center of attention and Biden looking as lost, befuddled and vacant as ever. Other world leaders literally had to lead him around by the hand; they must have surely wondered just what the hell has happened to America that they would send this demented old man to represent them at world events.
And no, it wasn’t “a deep fake” as some Democratic strategists have had the gall or insanity to suggest. The “right-wing” media – anybody not in the pocket of the Democratic National Committee – is not manufacturing this material just to further embarrass the old man in the White House.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Biden is clearly not in control of his faculties and it is evident that he hasn’t been in control of the White House for quite a while. Was he ever?
So it’s not surprising to hear Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) tell Fox News’ Jesse Watters that she’s “hearing on Capitol Hill” that Biden will soon be replaced.
But that’s hardly the last word in political intelligence.
Replacing Biden with Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) might be a severe temptation for many Democrats, who have emerged from their denial to acknowledge that Biden is incapable of being president right now, let alone serve for another four years or even capably fight an election campaign with a much more vigorous Trump.
But is it that simple?
No sitting president who has successfully earned a majority of delegates in the primary system has ever been replaced by his party or declined to run for office.
There have been sitting presidents who have lost the support of their party and been forced out. Pre-Civil War President Franklin Pierce did not run for a second term and was replaced by the equally disastrous James Buchanan, whom some consider the worst president in U.S. history. Post-Civil War President Andrew Johnson, Abraham Lincoln’s Democratic running-mate who narrowly escaped impeachment in the Senate, was completely isolated by 1868.
But these, and a handful of other examples, occurred long before the advent of the primary system. The first state to hold a presidential primary was North Dakota, in 1912. Like electing senators, the notion that the people and not a bunch of backroom party bosses should decide who their presidential candidate should be, was a product of an era that was critical of American democracy as being unfulfilled or half-hearted.
Party conventions can still have some drama, and the unexpected can occur if the favorite does not win on the first ballot, but for good or ill, both Republicans and Democrats have, in the aggregate, been nominating the people’s choices for over a century.
So where does that leave us with Biden? Even if today’s Democratic party bosses drug and banish Biden to a hospital, can they disqualify the man and repudiate the overwhelming choice of Democratic voters?
Biden was already dysfunctional at the start of the primaries and that apparently did not convince his supporters to deny him a second term.
But with the presidential debate with Trump looming, the DNC is profoundly worried that Biden is going to do a faceplant – literally and figuratively – before millions of American viewers. Will the efficacy of the drugs be sufficient to sustain Biden throughout the whole performance? Will he begin well but start to sputter midway through the debate like a car running out of gas?
If he does, there can be no discourse from the spinmeisters about any deep fakes or that nasty right-wing media producing misinformation or disinformation about earnest Joe Biden. It will be a grievous disaster for the Dems.
But rather than take their lumps for nominating a man who should have retired years ago and who is clearly suffering from dementia, the Democratic bosses will scramble for higher ground and quickly announce that Biden has decided – for the good of the party and of the country too – to step down as a presidential candidate. He will move aside because he realizes the party requires “younger leadership” to deal with the “challenges” of the current moment.
I don’t know if Biden’s handlers will have to aim a gun at him while he says these things.
Of course those challenges of rampant illegal immigration and an open border; crime and drug addiction exploding across America; enormous national debt and a valueless dollar; and a foreign policy that has led the U.S. to the brink of nuclear war with Russia are all of Biden’s making.
And you can just imagine Gavin Newsom, usually so sycophantic in his undying but ludicrous devotion to Biden, running up to the plate to announce he has heard the call to save America from Donald Trump.
Can it happen? Yes, it can.
It can happen because the primary system did not require a Constitutional amendment to operate and so does so at the discretion of the political parties. In other words, its results can be flagrantly ignored or overturned.
And that’s exactly what the Democratic Party establishment – who would sell their mothers to glue manufacturers – could do to preserve its power over America; its control over your life and its persecution of Donald Trump.
Replacing Biden is not a sure thing but you can bet on the overweening arrogance and overwhelming authoritarianism of the Democratic Party.
