It was an amazing thing to see last night. After pushing Biden out of the race, the night that was supposed to be his swan song became the Democrats' final insult as Biden's speech was pushed well past primetime. Much of the country was out of luck if they wanted to watch the speech and still be able to wake up to go to work in the morning.
It's as if the Democratic Party deliberately pushed the speech to a time when many Americans would largely not bother watching it. Yes, Biden was introduced by a series of speakers who gave lip service to how great, wonderful, and consequential he was, but it's impossible to believe that Biden and his team weren't insulted.
Alex Thompson of Axios reported that a longtime Biden aide texted him, “This is awful. He literally set up a campaign and handed it over to them—do they have to cut him out of prime time?"
The speech itself was a huge mess. So, on one hand, you kind of get it. Biden yelled, lied, and slurred his way through a speech that was largely the same as his campaign stump speech. On the other hand, it wasn't the send-off he was supposed to get, and clearly not the one his loyalists believed he deserved.
Related: Democrat Civil War Watch: Joe Biden To Skip Obama's and Kamala's Speeches at DNC
I've been saying for a while now that we should expect Team Biden to get some sort of revenge. After last night's insult, I think it's inevitable. Up until now, it's always been a gut feeling based on some little details that have been leaked.
It's been well established for weeks now that privately, Biden is still bitter about being forced out, and that he endorsed Harris as revenge against Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi. Past reports indicated that Barack Obama didn't originally endorse Kamala because he doesn't think she can defeat Donald Trump.
According to veteran Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, Barack Obama reportedly called Biden one morning and told him, "Here's the deal. We have Kamala's approval to invoke the 25th Amendment." But if Kamala was involved in the coup, why did Joe Biden endorse her? Naturally, he's got to be bitter at her as well, and he doesn't genuinely want her to be president.
Now it looks like Biden loyalists may in fact be plotting some kind of revenge.
Peter Hamby at Puck News reports that something is brewing behind the scenes. "Make no mistake: Biden, and a handful of advisers in his inner circle, are still licking their wounds after the party putsch to get him out of the race," he writes. "They would love to live in a world where Biden was still the nominee, even if things are unquestionably better for the party now, with a tidal wave of post-Biden excitement that has Harris surging in the polls."
Hamby continues:
I’m also told by two Democratic sources that Biden communications adviser Anita Dunn gave a rather salty departure speech at her farewell event after leaving the White House two weeks ago, with an odd reference to The Godfather and vague allusions to “getting revenge,” one person told me. Harris herself isn’t a big fan of Dunn, so her departure was probably for the best.
As Hamby notes, Biden would "never share any private bitterness in public," which is why he's still playing the role of a loyal Democrat trying to help Kamala get elected. In the end, he was forced out of the race against his will, and I suspect he would love for his legacy to be that he was the only Democrat who could beat Trump.
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