A PRESIDENCY’S BITTER END
Biden knows he has to go, but that doesn’t mean he’s happy about it
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Donald Trump’s core campaign issue, as he made clear again and again on Thursday night, is still the border and what he calls “unchecked illegal immigration” and the murder and mayhem that he insists, as he did in earlier campaigns, those from the south have brought to America.
But the Democrats have a far more immediate and complicated political issue to address. Scores of published reports have stated that President Joe Biden has come to his political senses—with the help of Representative Nancy Pelosi, the strong-willed and straight-talking former speaker of the House—and concluded that he cannot run for re-election.
The big issue for Biden has been the disaffection of many of his previously enthusiastic funders. One donor told me that there was much anger among his East Coast group at Biden’s inner circle for their mishandling of the president’s growing disconnection. “Not one of the president’s key aides,” he told me, “ever said one word to the donors” about the extent of Biden's disabilities prior to his revelatory debate with Trump last month. “It was as if the Democratic band was playing ‘Nearer, My God, to Thee’ on the deck of the Titanic.”
Pelosi was the one with the political savvy to tell the president that there will be no second term—something no one in the White House apparently saw fit to do—and her intervention, once publicly known, freed the cowering and mumbling Democratic leaders in the Senate and the House to begin to share their real fears to the White House and Washington press.
Pelosi’s influence has rescued the Democratic Party—at least in the short run.
Just what Biden will do next is not yet clear. Will he resign immediately and turn the White House over to Vice President Kamala Harris? Or will he follow Lyndon B. Johnson, who on March 31, 1968, told a stunned nationwide television audience that he would not run for re-election in November and would instead, eschewing domestic politics, focus on running the disastrous Vietnam war that he insisted at that late date, in what might charitably be called his own derangement, could still be won. The notion that Biden is capable of managing the disastrous American involvement in the wars in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip until the inauguration of his successor next January 20 is just as far-fetched.
There are a lot of caveats in the reporting published so far. In fact, no one in the media has heard directly from Biden in recent days. He is now recovering from a COVID infection and is presumably still in isolation. And no one really knows whether the president has deviated from his delusional line—buttressed by his immediate staff, who will go down in infamy for their self-serving protection of their careers—that he is doing just fine in the polls. One long-time family friend of the Bidens today sent me a message that seemed to contradict the headlines: “Joe’s heels are dug in.”
But those are cosmetic issues compared to the one now haunting many with ties to the upper reaches of the Democratic Party’s funding apparatus. I was told that Vice President Harris wants Biden’s job and has been working hard with many in the media to push the notion that it is time for a woman, especially a woman of color, to serve as president. She has even floated, to the dismay of party managers, the names of three men—Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Governor Joshua Shapiro of Pennsylvania, and Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, a former astronaut—to serve as her vice president and running mate in the campaign that could emerge. (In 2019 Harris had early traction in the primary campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination but performed poorly in the second round of debates and ran into money problems that forced her to drop out of the race in early December.)
None of the political pros I’ve spoken to this week would talk on the record about the extreme concern felt by Democratic Party bigwigs about the prospect of a woman of color and a Jew running for the White House against Trump, whose MAGA followers are predominantly white and resentful of the increasing influence of people of color in America.
At the debate in June, Trump said that Biden had “become like a Palestinian” and that “they,” the Palestinians, “don’t like him because he’s a very bad Palestinian. He’s a weak one.” His point seemed to be that Biden and his foreign policy team have failed to get the Israeli government and Hamas to agree to a ceasefire that would free the remaining Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners of Israel and give the battered people of Gaza a break from the months-long siege they’ve endured. The Biden administration has continued to be the main supplier of bombs and other arms to Israel. The war has continued, fueled by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence that the Israeli air and ground attacks will not cease until Hamas is destroyed.
Biden has been sharply criticized by Arabs around the world, and also by untold thousands of college and other students in America for continuing to supply weapons to the Israelis. The Biden administration’s efforts to arrange a ceasefire in Gaza have been dismissed out of hand by Netanyahu, who has no intention—as the Biden White House apparently has yet to comprehend—of pausing what has become his war.
So, what now?
The top issue, according to those with first-hand information, is to make sure that Biden does not decide immediately to abdicate the office and turn it over to Harris. “We want him to stay in office until January 20, 2025, when the new president is sworn in.” There would inevitably be a political downside to that strategy, I was told, because the Republicans would rightly “make hay” with the notion “that Biden is not fit to run for the presidency but still fit to be president” until the inauguration.
And the question confronting the political planners, I was told, is: “Does Biden has the strength to stay to the end?”
Another problem with keeping the ailing Biden in office for the next six months, as a political expert told me, is that “Kamala thinks she’s a solid candidate.” There is a lot of evidence that she may not be. On June 6, a Politico/Morning Consult poll found that “only a third of voters think it is likely Harris would win an election were she to become the Democratic nominee, and just three of five Democrats believe she would prevail. A quarter of independents think she would win.” The poll also showed that Harris shares the same poor ratings as Biden. Both are well under water: Biden at 43 percent favorable and 54 percent unfavorable; Harris is at 42 percent favorable and 52 percent unfavorable.
Meanwhile, the Democrats are also facing immediate and murderous foreign policy crises in both Ukraine and Gaza. Biden and his stunningly incompetent foreign policy team, who share a visceral contempt for President Vladimir Putin of Russia, have boxed themselves in with their continuing support, including billions in military and social aid, for the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. The war is going badly and Putin has what he wants in terms of captured Ukrainian territory.
The only rational solution is diplomatic talks and so far the Biden administration has refused to engage in negotiations.
In stricken Gaza, where the Biden team continues to be involved in indirect talks with Hamas and others, there has been no progress in obtaining a much-needed ceasefire that would, at a minimum, provide the release of Israeli hostages in return for the release of Palestinian prisoners.
The sticking point has been Netanyahu’s refusal to engage seriously with the back and forth of the talks, despite occasional hints that an opening might be possible. His goal, as he has said again and again, is to kill as many Hamas leaders and cadres as possible. Israeli bombings and attacks continue apace in Gaza, with horrid scenes of civilian deaths without any significant complaints from Biden or his foreign policy team.
It is a shabby performance that will be made worse when Netanhayu comes to Washington next Wednesday at the invitation of Republicans in Congress. The unyielding Israeli leader is scheduled to give a speech to a joint session of Congress and also have public and private meetings with Biden, if he is cleared of COVID, and with Harris.
Oh, to be a note taker at that meeting . . . if it comes off.
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