Will Biden Choose Medically Assisted Political Suicide?

Welcome to the latest edition of the Biden Campaign Collapse Tracker, my ongoing series that will last as long as Presidentish Joe Biden does. You might be waving farewell to both of them soon — and the sound you hear is what Ronald Reagan once called "the concrete cracking around my feet." But I'll come back to that in just a moment.

First, I must remind you that a few years ago, Canada's progressives created Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) — a euthanasia program that they promised was just for really very quite sick people who were in a lot of pain and had no hope of recovery. Since then, MAID has been expanded to include turning the lights off, forever, for people suffering from depression, poverty, and the heartache of halitosis.

I MAID up that last one (heh) but the first two have happened.

America's progressives — i.e., Democrats — introduced this week their own euthanasia program called Medically Assisted Political Suicide (MAPS). Unlike MAID, MAPS is narrowly targeted. It's aimed at just one man, actually. One Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.

"Money is the lifeblood of politics," the old saw goes, and Biden's is running out.

Hollywood bigwig Jeffrey Katzenberg met with Biden in Las Vegas on Wednesday, according to a Liz Hoffman/Ben Smith scoop for Semafor. He reportedly told Biden "that major donors, doubtful of his ability to win in November, have all but stopped writing the kind of big checks that sustain campaigns in the home stretch."

That's according to the usual "people familiar with the matter."

Katzenberg issued a semi-denial, but "Democratic donors have been privately wringing their hands for weeks" because "the Biden campaign had $240 million in the second quarter, versus Trump’s $285 million, and that was before the debate kicked off concerns about his ability to run and win."

Here's where things get all conspiratorial.

On Tuesday, Biden told BET that he'd consider dropping out "If I had some medical condition that emerged, if somebody, if doctors came to me and said, you got this problem and that problem…" (he kinda trailed off). After meeting with Katzenberg, Biden tested positive for COVID and boarded Air Force One — painfully, slowly, and using the Little Boy stairs — to recuperate for a week at his home in Delaware.

That same night, I believe while Biden was still in the air, another report surfaced that Biden had become privately "receptive" to dropping out, despite his public intransigence.

Biden was next seen leaving Air Force One in Delaware, clearly near the end of his rope.

He isn't masked. He isn't distancing.

My friend and colleague Stephen Kruiser and I have argued for three years now that Biden would never drop out, and except for wavering briefly in the days after the debate debacle and once again last week, my feet have been set in concrete on this issue.

The sound you hear is the concrete cracking around my feet. With the money drying up and both the Senate and House Dem caucuses arraying against him, is it even possible for Biden to remain? Has MAPS come for the old man in ill health?

Those in the know will get a laugh out of this dark tweet — and then I'll share the good news.

The Republican National Convention has played this latest crisis very smart. Yes, Biden's senescence is an issue. More than that, it's a national and international crisis. But it's Biden's policies that the next administration must reverse, not his age. And the RNC spent some of the best parts of Wednesday night hammering away at one failed Biden policy after another.

That will make it easier for Trump-Vance and the entire RNC machine to target Biden's replacement, who will presumably be much younger...

...even though their ideas will be no fresher.

Join me for the chaos at the DNC, won't you?