It's getting late in the day for Democrats who might love Joe Biden but firmly believe he can't win. Despite the fact the primary season has barely gotten underway, there simply is no alternative to Biden for Democrats who place winning in November over everything else.
These are Democrats who have been hit upside the head by reality. They know Biden is too old. But they also know that unless the president can be convinced to step aside for the good of the party and the good of the country, Democrats are stuck with him.
Ezra Klien, one of the sharpest analysts on the left, believes that it's not a matter of whether Biden would be capable as president. The question is whether Biden is capable of running for president.
We had to wait till this year — till now, really — to see Biden even begin to show what he’d be like on the campaign trail. And what I think we’re seeing is that he is not up for this. He is not the campaigner he was, even five years ago. That’s not insider reporting on my part. Go watch a speech he gave in Pennsylvania, kicking off his campaign in 2019. And then go watch the speech he gave last month, in Valley Forge, kicking off his election campaign. No comparison here. Both speeches are on YouTube, and you can see it. The way he moves, the energy in his voice. The Democrats denying decline are only fooling themselves.
It's clear that his aides are shielding Biden from the reality of his condition and the state of the world. Indeed, you can hardly hide from one without hiding from the other They have gone to great lengths to shield him from the fervor of pro-Palestinian protests. For those who might wonder how that could be possible in the modern age, a president like Biden exists in an information bubble. The only information that enters the bubble is supplied by close aides.
They are zealously guarding the King's keep, preventing anyone from even asking the question about Biden withdrawing from the campaign.
The Biden team views the very question as absurd. The president in their view has an impressive record of accomplishment to run on. There is no obvious alternative. It is far too late in the cycle to bow out without considerable disruption. If he were ever to have opted against a second term, it would have been a year ago when there would have been time for a successor to emerge. And other than someone with Biden in their name, it is hard to imagine who would have enough influence to even broach the idea with him, much less sway him.
It's not a problem for presidents like Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush. They were usually able to fight their way through the roadblocks to information set up by aides. Information is power, especially in Washington, and aides can wield enormous amounts of power by delivering information to or withholding information from the president.
Such is the case of Biden's appearances where he might be confronted by pro-Palestinian protesters.
President Joe Biden’s team is increasingly taking extraordinary steps to minimize disruptions from pro-Palestinian protests at his events by making them smaller, withholding their precise locations from the media and the public until he arrives, avoiding college campuses and, in at least one instance, considering hiring a private company to vet attendees.
The efforts have resulted in zero disruptions at events the White House or the campaign have organized for Biden in the five weeks since he was interrupted a dozen times during an abortion rights speech in Virginia.
What's so concerning about this is that we have no idea how much information Biden is given about anything. If Biden has truly become a creature of his staff, who can be trusted to tell him the truth when his condition inevitably worsens?
Any scenario to replace Biden starts and ends with Vice President Kamala Harris. Even candidates waiting in the wings like California Governor Gavin Newsom would take months to ramp up a national campaign to match Donald Trump by November. It's just not a feasible option for Democrats.
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That means Harris is the only candidate in waiting. But she's polling worse than Biden, and that's before Republicans start redefining her. Besides, she's even more of a gaffe machine than Biden.
So Democrats are stuck with Joe Biden. Admittedly, it's not much to hang their hat on. But with no realistic alternative, they're going to prop Biden up and trot him out for a few events a week and hope for the best.
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