Blame those conservatives who insisted so loudly and for so long that it was going to happen. Blame the conspiracy theorists, who ended up being right once again when the conspiracy turned out to be real.
Thanks to them, we were all too ready to accept it when it happened — to accept that Joe Biden would not be the Democrats’ nominee in 2024 .
But Biden’s decision to abandon an already-won renomination contest and snuff out his own political career is a far more shocking development than anyone is giving it credit for.
To be sure, Biden’s career was probably over either way. Even before his disastrous June 27 debate, polls showed him headed for defeat. Biden trailed in nearly every state-level poll taken this calendar year in North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada.
Thus, former President Donald Trump appeared to have 268 electoral votes locked down. Trump needed just one more win (any swing state or Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District) for an Electoral College tie or win that would restore him to the White House. In other words, Biden’s back was against the wall. He needed to win every single swing state and district or he was toast. And not only was Biden already trailing in nearly all polls of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, but Trump seemed on the edge of putting new states into play: Virginia, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Maine at-large, Colorado, and even New Jersey.
That explains why Democrats and liberals were so eager to pressure Biden into such an undignified withdrawal from public life, which their pious flattery cannot change .
Yet Biden did not in fact drop out of the race because he was already losing before the debate. He dropped out because his debate performance laid bare his mental decline beyond anyone’s ability to deny, deflect, or deceive.
Biden’s team had done all it could to hide his condition, not always successfully , to be sure, but the debate was the very first incident that exposed him before an audience of more than 50 million people. With his mouth agape, his face blank, his mind unable to complete thoughts, his mouth unable to string sentences together, Biden was the very picture of non compos mentis. One could have forgiven Trump, on a different timeline, for refusing a second debate with Biden on the grounds that he opposes elder abuse.
But if not for that unprecedented early debate, Biden would have been the nominee. The real story here is that Democrats quite nearly renominated someone who obviously lacks the mental faculties to govern the nation. And indeed, by failing to remove him via the 25th Amendment, Democrats are forcing all of us to live under an incapable person for the next six months. One can only hope that Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are too busy with their own problems to notice.
This could never have happened but for the profound rot within the Democratic Party . Democrats, you see, have an authority problem, albeit not the one you think.
Long before I was born, the rank-and-file Catholic co-religionists of both Biden and myself were told, as the saying goes, to “pay, pray, and obey.” They mostly complied, understanding the divine nature of the enterprise. But the old Catholic ways have nothing on Democrats’ unquestioning submission to party authority. Democrats continue to pay and obey, even though they don’t believe in prayer — ironic, given most Democrats’ ideological commitment to subverting authority.
In any case, with that paradox comes another: For all of their professed respect for “our democracy” — you might remember how Trump was supposedly a great threat to “our democracy” and there would never be another election if he won — Democrats at the highest levels are returning with gusto to their party’s oligarchic roots . Party bosses in backrooms (presumably smoke-free) are about to choose a nominee for whom not a single Democratic primary vote has ever been cast, not in 2020 and not this year.
The tipping point for Biden's presidency came with the reluctant assent of one man — a man who had supported Biden right up to the point where he couldn’t sustain it any longer. And he was reluctant not because of any love of Biden but because Biden had been providing him his third term.
In February , I wrote about how Biden was “an empty vessel for all-inclusive Obama-era leftism, which keeps evolving into something ever more extreme.” I wrote that to the Obama-ites, “Biden does not matter. He might have the title of president, but it is the young, radical aides from the Obama era who are really running the country in his name.” I added that “Biden’s administration is so derivative of Obama’s that one could be forgiven for thinking the former president is still in charge.”
This was not, and is not, to say that former President Barack Obama was literally exercising the nation’s executive power. Rather, his ideological heirs — his old staffers, from their appointed positions of power within Biden’s administration — have been running everything all along in an administration that has been Biden’s in name only. This may explain in part why the direction Biden has taken in office looks so different from the promises he made in 2020 to restore normalcy and reunite the nation after Trump’s tumultuous term.
Over a 16-year period, Obama has quietly and successfully radicalized Democratic politics, re-creating one of the two major parties in his own community organizer image and likeness. Biden, meanwhile, whom Obama considered a disloyal chatterbox, an embarrassment whom he nearly booted off the 2012 ticket, has had a fun ride in the people’s house. He eats his ice cream, takes his naps, and observes his early bedtime. Meanwhile, within the massive maze of bureaucracy, Obama’s revolution continues.
Prior to the debate, Obama, as much as Vice President Kamala Harris , former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and all other powerful Democrats, had an incentive to keep up the false appearance that Biden was fit to serve. And most people were easily fooled. Yes, abundant evidence of Biden’s unfitness had reached millions of political YouTube addicts, but it was simply explained away or suppressed as “disinformation.” People were told they were seeing and sharing “manipulated” videos and “ cheap fakes .”
By the time the debate had ended on June 27, neither Biden’s party colleagues nor the news media could continue the cover-up. They had managed to hide him throughout 2020, thanks to the pandemic, and after Biden became president, they managed to keep him away from as many open microphones as possible. But after that debate, there was just no more hiding the problem.
For Obama, a good thing had come to an end. Biden had lost all utility and was fit only to be returned from the historical ash heap from which Obama had plucked him in 2008.
Obama seems to have reached this conclusion reluctantly and later than almost every other important Democrat. And his leaking of "concerns" on July 19, along with Pelosi's decision to turn against Biden, was the last straw. Once he and Pelosi had abandoned Biden, all other Democrats had permission to do the same.
It must be added here that these political manipulations by Democratic bosses, including most prominently the concealment of Biden's incapacity but now also the defenestration of their own presumptive presidential nominee, have damaged voter confidence in the federal government — and at a time when there is already deep and justified skepticism about Washington. Their shambolic abuse of the democratic process only lengthens the list of systemic shortcomings that have enraged voters: a Congress that cannot pass spending bills without a crisis, a Secret Service that cannot protect presidential candidates, a border crisis created by the Biden-Harris administration as if on purpose , and of course the many prosecutions and civil actions cooked up by various Democrats with the obvious goal of overburdening Trump and knocking him out of the election.
Obama has thus continued playing his own role in loosening the fabric of the republic and undermining the integrity of one of its two main political parties. If you wonder why conspiracy theories keep cropping up, including the one about whether Biden was still alive or aware of his own withdrawal, look no further than the machinations of untrustworthy leaders who did indeed conspire for so long to keep Biden's condition from the voters. Some conspiracies are real, after all.
Despite falling on a Sunday afternoon, Biden’s decision to withdraw was apparently so rushed that he could not even be bothered to release a video announcing his earth-shaking news or address the nation or show his face in public until midweek. If Biden’s aides are to be believed, the failure to endorse Harris immediately was a mere oversight in the heat of the moment. They told Politico that the Harris endorsement came “moments later” on X after “a flurry of panicked texts and calls.” But this account, especially coming from people who had lied about so much for so long, seems doubtful. The Harris endorsement came a full 27 minutes after the withdrawal letter was posted. Was this an unscripted, passive-aggressive act of revenge against those doing all the leaking and pushing him out?
Obama's response appeared on Medium an hour or so later. And to be fair, he was not entirely unkind. He called Biden “a dear friend and partner to me.”
But the former president, who is a brilliant writer and surely signed off on the contents or even composed them himself, had a chance to say anything he liked about Biden’s presidency. He could have praised his advocacy for the American worker or his commitment to justice, fairness, and equality. In short, he could have said something nice. He did not.
The most he could bring himself to say about Biden’s leadership was that he was “one of the most consequential presidents in American history.” This damningly faint praise about a man three years into the job evokes Obama’s lethal remark to Hillary Clinton in a presidential debate 16 years ago: “You’re likable enough.” Those brilliantly poisonous words were still damaging Clinton during her 2016 presidential race and might as well serve as her epitaph when she goes to her eternal reward. Yet “most consequential,” despite receiving far less attention, might be the sharpest insult Obama has ever penned.
Obama avoided endorsing Harris that day and has in fact held out longer than Pelosi and most of the mob. He instead called for a "process" that would give his party a strong nominee. Perhaps he just wanted to keep options open. Perhaps he simply did not anticipate there would be a need to discard Biden. Or perhaps he wants to salvage a veneer of democracy for a party that increasingly eschews it.
Did he intend to put forward someone else? His wife, perhaps? I say no, and by all accounts, she would not have gone along with the plan even if he had tried. But given Obama’s massive influence over Democratic politics since his breakthrough convention speech of July 27, 2004, can you really fault those engaged in such speculation? I used to think Vivek Ramaswamy was taking the joke too far when he demanded in a debate that Democrats stop pretending Biden would be their nominee . I still think he is wrong about Michelle, but forgive me if I am less dismissive than I used to be.
Either way, events quickly overtook Obama. With Biden’s assistance, the backing of progressives, unions, black Democrats, and the influential Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), Harris now has the upper hand and seems a lock to inherit the nomination. A good party man, Obama will fall in line soon enough, if he hasn’t already backed her by the time this is published.
After all, even the Clintons reached out from their political grave to announce support for her within minutes. Obama cannot afford to be the only holdout.
There are no serious ideological disagreements. A Harris presidency would in most ways be a continuation of Biden’s, only with a lot more internal rancor and perhaps a 90% staff turnover . But her administration, were she to win, would not necessarily belong to Obama the way Biden’s has from its inception. She has an entirely different California pool from which to draw progressive personnel and a distinct, if partially overlapping, base of financial support.
If Obama's third term has evinced the vastness of his influence over Democratic politics, Biden's unprecedented withdrawal and apparent spite endorsement of Harris have finally demonstrated its limits. It's still Obama's party, yes, but for how long?
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Well, Obama does have at least some right to stake a claim already. Should she win the nomination, Harris will owe it to his having finally given in and accepted Biden’s demise. And assuming he does what everyone expects and throws in behind her, dare he hope that she is the new and cackling empty vessel of his fourth term?
An old-fashioned party boss at least has to try.
David Freddoso is deputy opinion editor of the Hill and author of The Case Against Barack Obama (August 2008).
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