You'll Never Guess Who Just Made a Power Play on the Cover of Vogue

DOCTOR Jill Biden is the power player on the cover of the August issue of Vogue that dropped early Monday and, if she was trying to make a statement about the election and last week's debate debacle, her timing couldn't have been better.

Granted, these covers are planned weeks in advance — glamour shots like DOCTOR Jill Biden's don't just happen on a whim. 

But the little blurb that goes with the cover shot? That can be changed at any time, right up to publication. It doesn't take any time or special skill. Anybody with 34 seconds to learn how to use a meme generator like Imgflip — they're my go-to, BTW — could do it.

So there's DOCTOR Jill Biden on the cover of Vogue, insisting, "WE WILL DECIDE OUR FUTURE."

"Every campaign is important, and every campaign is hard,” shares Dr. Jill Biden, the first lady and Vogue’s August cover subject. Whatever happens between now and November, it is Jill Biden who will remain the president's closest confidant and advocate. https://t.co/y6WcDbsWtf pic.twitter.com/4LQFUzoVx6

— Vogue Magazine (@voguemagazine) July 1, 2024

Forgive me, please, if this next bit sounds like I'm indulging in a little old-school Kremlinology. But, when The Most Powerful Man in the World™ turns out to be an octogenarian demi-corpse/marionette whose strings are primarily held by a preening schoolteacher, at least a little old-school Kremlinology is required.

So there are two things you can't help but notice about that cover blurb.

The first is that DOCTOR Jill Biden says that "WE" will decide. That's curious because DOCTOR Jill Biden wasn't elected to anything. If she had wanted to make her husband — the ostensible commander-in-chief — appear strong and in command, she'd have said, "He will decide," or, even better, "The President will decide." Or if she wanted something a little more folksy, "Joe will decide."

But no. It's "WE WILL DECIDE."

DOCTOR Jill Biden wants to remind everybody that she's the strong one, the one in command.

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The second thing I noticed was more of a question. Was DOCTOR Jill Biden using the royal we? 

As though to confirm everyone's (well-founded) suspicions, Axios national political correspondent Alex Thompson noticed a late addition to Vogue's cover story on DOCTOR Jill Biden.

Per an editor’s note at the top of the piece, Jill Biden talked to Vogue again yesterday and said: they “will not let those 90 minutes define the four years he’s been president. We will continue to fight.”

Biden, she added, “will always do what’s best for the country.” pic.twitter.com/b3U9hy8rc6

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) July 1, 2024

The window people are talking about for Biden to drop out of the race is in the next two or three weeks. That's time enough to see whether the big-money donors are coming back. It's time enough to put together an exit strategy. 

Although, to be fair, after watching Biden's bungled Afghanistan bugout, it's fair to ask how many corpses might be left behind if he exits the race. But it isn't so long that there wouldn't be time to settle on a replacement candidate (by whatever means) and to give the replacement a chance to hit the ground running before the convention starts in Chicago on August 19.

But rest assured that, no matter how things play out between now and the convention, it will be DOCTOR Jill Biden behind the curtain, pulling the levers for our real-world Wizard of Oz.