"Every time I think I'm back in, they pull me out!" —Michael Corleone, doing his best Joe Biden impersonation from "The Godfather Part III."
Welcome to the return of the Biden Campaign Collapse Tracker, which took off a couple of days while we all basked in the glow of Donald Trump giving a Pennsylvania crowd multiple fist-pumps after a would-be assassin's bullet nearly killed him.
It appeared as though the Democrat Civil War of 2024 had ended in an unsatisfactory (for them; I'm loving it) stalemate with a critically wounded Presidentish Joe Biden still atop the ticket. But now comes word that the fighting has quietly begun again.
Biden fired the first shot — randomly, wildly, angrily, and completely off-target.
Axios reported late Tuesday that a House Democrat — who asked to remain anonymous for obvious reasons — told the paper's Andrew Solender and Alex Thompson that Democrat congresscritters are "back to being angry at Biden and a push to sign on to this letter is going around ... the 'replace Biden' movement is back."
Good luck with that, fellas, even though I earnestly hope you're stuck to election days and beyond with that shuffling trainwreck you foisted on your party and then the nation in 2020. And since the DNC is moving to deliver the official nomination to Biden (more on that below) even before the Chicago convention in August and the Reality Distortion Field the White House keeps Biden inside, you are almost certainly stuck with him, indeed.
But the juicy part is that it was yet another Biden temper tantrum that brought the 'replace Biden' movement back during another one of his ill-tempered appearances. This one was on a Zoom call with the very same Capitol Hill Democrats Biden was supposed to be reassuring.
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Clearly agitated, Biden went on an angry tirade against Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), a decorated retired Army Ranger.
Brace yourself before you read what transpired.
Puck's Julia Ioffe saw the Zoom video of Saturday's confrontation between Biden and Rep. Crow: "Tell me who the hell that is! Tell me who put NATO back together! Tell me who did something that you’ve never done with your Bronze Star like my son" https://t.co/BXjqEmzImp pic.twitter.com/F9qt2M3h51
— Nick Field (@nick_field90) July 17, 2024
"Tell me who did something that you've never done with your Bronze Star like my son," Biden shouted at the combat veteran. Beau Biden never saw combat.
My old blogging friend Lorie Byrd quipped, "If this is real, Biden has seriously lost it. I mean even worse than we already knew he lost it."
Biden has no idea how he looks or how he sounds, and at least one report indicates that Congressional Democrats believe his inner circle — which no longer even includes any cabinet members — is hiding or cherry-picking polls from him.
Scenes like these are why the White House is still trying to have Biden nominated remotely, weeks before the convention, using Ohio election law as their excuse. Nate Silver reminded readers on Tuesday that DNC Chair "Jaime Harrison and the DNC are blatantly lying about this (Ohio changed its law so there's no reason to nominate Biden early)."
According to that same Axios report, a significant number of Congressional Dems are considering signing an open letter saying that they "respectfully but emphatically request that you cancel any plans for an accelerated 'virtual roll call' and, as Axios summarized it, "further refrain from any extraordinary procedures that could be perceived as curtailing legitimate debate."
Translation: they're increasingly willing to risk the chaos of an open convention that let Biden cost them their seats. The most weasely member of the Dem caucus, California Congresscritter Adam Schiff, just now publically called on Biden to drop out. That follows a weekend report that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer admitted (privately, of course) that Biden is probably going to bring them all down.
It certainly looks like the White House and the DNC (but I repeat myself) understand that there's no way for Biden to survive on the top of the ticket if, by some miracle, the Anybody But Biden Democrats were able to force an open convention.
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