Presidentish Joe Biden regrets allowing himself to be forced out of the presidential race and thinks that, unlike Vice President Kamala Harris, he still could have beaten Donald Trump, according to a weekend report in the Washington Post.
"Biden and some of his aides still believe he should have stayed in the race, despite the rocky debate performance and low poll numbers that prompted Democrats to pressure him to drop out," the Post reported. "Biden and these aides have told people in recent days that he could have defeated Trump, according to people familiar with their comments, who spoke on the condition of anonymity."
Biden might earnestly believe that the confused, slow, dead-eyed, mouth-breathing performance he delivered at the June debate against Trump was because he "was sick" — a one-off night that he could recover from before election day.
People suffering from dementia oftentimes lack self-awareness. Also, it's what he was being told. That Washington Post story led with an anecdote from Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), who, you might remember, was the man who saved Biden's foundering primary campaign in 2020. Clyburn "made a confession" to the Post about his "belief that substance is more important than style in politics."
"I have come to the conclusion in recent days that I’m wrong about that," Clyburn told Biden after the debate. "The new environment that we currently live in — style seems to carry the day more than substance,” and "Your style does not lend itself well to the environment we’re currently in."
"Style" was Biden's problem on June 27 — yeah, that's the ticket. Yet it's the theme threaded throughout WaPo's excuse-mongering report on a failed president, with reporter Tyler Pager going deep to sell the fiction that Biden was a success on substance but doomed to a single term by a country obsessed with mere style.
"Too senile to comport himself as president in public or even in private" is a style, I suppose.
Could he have done better against Trump than Kamala Harris did? No, that is yet another fiction.
Harris was able to solidify the Democrat base that was slipping from Biden's feeble grasp for no reason other than the deeply unloved veep wasn't in an obvious state of dementia. And, of course, the inevitable media love-fest heaped upon solely because she was the Democrat nominee. Harris was unable to extend beyond her base for reasons I spent the 107 days of her campaign detailing in comic-horror.
Harris was thoroughly repudiated by American voters, going zero-for-seven in the swing states.
Biden, on the other hand, was looking weak in New Hampshire, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Virginia, too. Given the opportunity, Americans might have repudiated Biden's Cateresque single disaster of a term with a 344-194 drubbing. Or even 345-193 if Biden had failed to carry Nebraska's lone blue district.
But we were denied that chance.
As a politician, Biden could be reliably found on the wrong side of virtually every issue, and his only demonstrable talent was for venomous rhetoric and laughable fabrication. As a human being, Biden was always an ego-driven grifter — petty and mean. More than anything, at the end of his sordid life, he needed a complete repudiation at the ballot box.
We, the people, needed that, too. But we were denied the opportunity by an insider cabal of top-level players from the misleadingly named Democratic Party.
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