Joe Biden’s mental and physical decline during his presidency has finally become something that the mainstream media is willing to talk about. Sure, it's pretending that it wasn’t part of the cover, but at least it’s out there. Anyone paying attention knew that the Democratic Party was very much aware that there was something incredibly wrong with Joe Biden, and did nothing.
The question, of course, is why? Democrats believe that had Biden dropped out earlier or never sought reelection, they’d have chance to win in 2024. So why didn’t they invoke the 25th Amendment?
After Donald Trump's 2016 win, Democrats and the media wouldn’t stop making baseless assertions about his mental health. They even trotted out 350 so-called “mental health professionals” to sign a petition in 2019 claiming that Trump’s mental health was deteriorating rapidly. It was absurd, of course, but the reason I bring it up is that Democrats repeatedly ginned up bogus pretexts for Trump to be removed from office via the 25th Amendment, and yet when there was actually a cognitively impaired president in the Oval Office, they did nothing.
Let’s not pretend that they didn’t know.
Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s book “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” may rehash much of what those of us in conservative media reported on for years, but it also makes it clear that Biden’s aides turned the White House into a glorified nursing home, shielding a president who was confused, forgetful, and barely coherent at times.
Related: DOJ Official Names Top Three Suspects in Biden Autopen Scandal
Party leaders and insiders knew. And after four years of trying to push the narrative that Trump was a mental case who needed to be forced out of the presidency via the 25th Amendment, they assured us that Joe Biden was sharp as a tack, a beast, a powerhouse who left his aides in the dust. There had to be a reason they didn’t use the opportunity to claim the moral high ground and invoke the 25th Amendment well before the election forced their hand.
The answer is simple: Kamala Harris.
Harris wasn’t chosen for her intellect or qualifications. She was picked to be Biden’s insurance policy, a political firewall against the 25th Amendment. Democrats knew that Biden was slipping, but they also knew that Harris was so politically toxic that elevating her would tank their chances. Her approval ratings were somehow even worse than Biden’s. From her humiliating performance as border czar, to her rambling word salads, to her historically bad favorability, Harris didn’t just underperform; she made Biden look like the safer bet by comparison.
And that was the plan. She wasn’t a running mate — she was a deterrent. She was put on the ticket to prevent any party member from attempting to remove Biden, regardless of the severity of his cognitive deterioration.
Then, to make things worse, Biden boxed the party in again by endorsing her when Democrats were hoping for a competitive primary to replace both of them with someone more coherent and electable.
I’ve never believed Biden personally wanted Harris on the ticket. But his handlers did. They knew they needed a safeguard to prevent a 25th Amendment scenario, and Harris, with all her baggage and unlikability, fit the role perfectly.
