Is the Debate To Be Biden’s Last Stand?
By Steve Huntley
June 21, 2024
It’s so strange, so unprecedented and so bizarre that no one is talking about it being so strange, so unprecedented and so bizarre.
That it is the debate scheduled for next Thursday, June 27, between President Biden and former President Trump.
June 27 — that’s more than two weeks before the Republican National Convention, more than seven weeks before the Democratic National Convention. And almost 10 weeks before Labor Day, the traditional date for the start of a general election presidential campaign.
And summer is a time when America is mostly on vacation. Folks are thinking more about beach time, airline schedules and the next hot travel destination. Politics is mostly shoved into the mental attic until the fall.
This fellow makes good points, particularly should Biden fail miserably and be replaced:
A debate between the two parties’ presidential candidates this early has never happened before. Never.
The explanation is that the Biden campaign, worried about his sagging poll ratings, wants to reassure voters about his age and mental acuity, contrast himself with Trump, and remind Americans that the stakes have never been higher. Meaning the evil orange man might get returned to the White House, and America needs to know how awful he is.
Really, the country needs to hear more Democrat reasons to hate Trump?
Already the legacy media daily sound the alarms about Trump’s supposed threat to democracy, mom and apple pie.
But that’s what Democrats are selling — an early debate exposé of the manifest danger of a second Trump term.
Let’s consider another possible motive, one perhaps animating Democrat leaders and party faithful who behind the scenes must be verging on panic over the increasing public perception of Biden as a senile old fool, an 81-year-old man who’s doddering, decrepit, feeble in mind and body.
That’s not a new worry. It had been building for months before the debate, and another one was announced for Sept. 10th. The president’s aging was officially and graphically described with the February release of a special prosecutor’s report about Biden holding on to classified government documents from his Senate and vice president days. In declining to bring criminal charges against Biden, the prosecutor described him as someone who would appear to a jury to be “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
This landed like an atom bomb because it confirmed what Americans had seen with their own eyes. Countless video clips revealed Biden stumbling, falling down, wandering aimlessly, mumbling and uttering incoherent ramblings about public policy and imaginary events from the past.
Since then, the picture has only gotten worse. The Wall Street Journal interviewed 45 people for an article headlined “Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping.” The New York Times exposed Biden’s tall stories as phony, or as its headline delicately put it, “Untangling Some of the President’s Favorite Yarns.” After Biden met with world leaders at the G7 summit in Italy, a London newspaper delivered a devastating verdict from the officials there: He was “losing focus” and “it’s the worst he has ever been.”
Still, nothing really new there. So why an early debate?
Influential Democrats might see it as the last chance to save the party in November.
These movers and shakers might figure that if Biden has a crippling debate performance of disconnected ramblings, meaningless utterances, angry outbursts and undeniable mental decline, there’s still time to persuade him to drop out and for the national convention in late July to produce a replacement.
Just over a week ago prominent Democrat strategist James Carville, who knows a thing or two about how to succeed in politics, said he wished that Biden had already dropped out.
After another recent disastrous poll, analyst Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight declared, “Dropping out would be a big risk. But there’s some threshold below which continuing to run is a bigger risk. Are we there yet? I don’t know. But it’s more than fair to ask.”
Suppose the debate turns into a humiliating embarrassment for Biden. Democrats might find themselves at Silver’s “there.”
No doubt a boatload of problems confronts any move to get Biden out.
First up is getting Biden to agree to it. A big lift, no doubt. The key figure is First Lady Jill Biden. The word is she loves the power of the executive mansion and won’t let go. But could Biden do so badly that she’d finally concede it’s in his best interest to quit the race?
Another formidable challenge would be denying Kamala Harris the right of succession as the party’s new presidential nominee. The vice president, thanks to her cackling and incomprehensible word salads, has achieved the unenviable status of being even more unpopular than her boss. Still, the conventional wisdom is that the Democrat base of women and black voters might revolt if she’s dumped.
Then, if those two obstacles are overcome, there’s the question of whom the Democrats nominate in the convention of late July? For the first time in decades, a political convention would be must-see TV.
There’s no need here to go into all the names who might jockey for the top job. But Republicans, for all their glee in watching Democrats squirm over Biden’s mental decline, should be very wary of the consequences of seeing him pushed out.
A younger, fresh face on the national scene most likely would be not just welcomed but cheered by millions of voters desperate for something other than what they see as the dreary Biden-Trump choice.
Independents and moderates might well view a new Democrat nominee as a much-needed break from the hyper-partisan, divisive and depressing politics of the past eight years.
That could apply even to candidates Republicans would damn as too liberal and too woke, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Voters might be willing to overlook that for a much-desired fresh face offering a new direction for the nation. The charismatic Newsom has popped up on Fox News from time to time, demonstrating he’s willing to campaign for votes on the right.
The presidential race would become a whole new ballgame.
Harris is the focus of yet another option getting a little media talk in Washington. This idea would be, keep Biden on the ticket but have Harris drop out, opening the way for a replacement vice presidential nominee better viewed by the voters as a legitimate potential president.
Obviously, the thinking is that whoever is vice president to Biden will end up in the Oval Office eventually, and maybe soon in a second term.
History demonstrates the wisdom of that approach. In 1944 President Franklin D. Roosevelt dumped Vice President Henry Wallace, an apologist for Soviet communism, and replaced him on the ticket with Harry Truman. Roosevelt was an old man in failing health. He died just a couple of months into his fourth term, and Truman got the top job and won good marks from historians for his tenure.
Of course, there’s always a stupid way to do this. A Washington Post columnist suggested as a replacement for Harris — get this — Hillary Clinton. That’s just what 2024 presidential politics need — another dreary old face from the past.
There you have it, speculation about what might be behind this early debate. Perhaps you can find holes in these musings. Or offer counter arguments why it won’t happen. Or see it as too late in the game.
Or maybe you think this scenario of pushing Biden aside might be too cynical or Machiavellian. If so, let’s revisit a simple truth: The Democrats’ and the hard left’s lust for power and their obsession with destroying Trump know no bounds.
Think of the big lie of Russian collusion they promoted for years to try to cripple Trump’s presidency. Remember how they co-opted the Covid 19 pandemic to bend and manipulate election laws in state after state to ensure a huge Democrat turnout in the 2020 election.
Recall how they organized 51 former intelligence officers to suppress news media coverage of the infamous Hunter Biden laptop. That contained a record of drinking, doping and whoring that, if widely reported, it might have tipped to Trump some close state races that went to Biden.
And never forget the sorry story of Democrats tossing aside all political norms to prosecute criminally Trump to try to discredit him with the voters. A judge in New York may yet send Trump to jail after his conviction on cooked-up, specious charges.
For Democrats, the ends justify the means.
Of course there’s one possibility I haven’t mentioned. Maybe the June 27 debate will surprise us all — Biden does well enough to remain a viable candidate, or even shines and boosts his prospects.
The president has exceeded expectations in the past, such as with this year’s State of the Union Address. Could happen again. Trump told the New York Post he thinks Biden’s handlers will “juice him up” with performance enhancing drugs.
Who knows, with low expectations for Biden, maybe he could do well enough that the media would crown him the winner. Given these crazy political times and the ruthless ambitions of the Democrats, would any of these scenarios coming true surprise you?
Steve Huntley, a retired Chicago journalist now living in Austin, Texas, has contributed other pieces to johnkassnews, from an examination of the secret jail for Christopher Columnbus and other politically problematic public art to an essay on Americans suffering from Joe Biden gas pain.
For almost three decades Huntley spent most of his career in Chicago journalism at the Chicago Sun-Times, where he was a feature writer, metro reporter, night city editor, metropolitan editor, editorial page editor and a columnist for the opinion pages.
Before that he was a reporter and editor with United Press International (UPI) in the South and Chicago, and Chicago bureau chief and a senior editor in Washington with U.S. News & World Report. Northwestern University Press has issued soft cover and eBook editions of Knocking Down Barriers: My Fight for Black America by Truman K. Gibson Jr. with Steve Huntley, a memoir of a Chicagoan who was a member of President Roosevelt’s World War II Black Cabinet working to desegregate the military.
https://johnkassnews.com/is-the-debate-to-be-bidens-last-stand/
