RUTHFULLY YOURS

So, he finally caved. On Sunday, Joe Biden announced he was dropping out of the 2024 race for the White House. This followed weeks of intense pressure on him from Democratic Party bigwigs, who were shocked into action after his disastrous debate performance on 27 June.

Biden’s decision is historic – there has never been a withdrawal from a US presidential contest so late in the process. It reveals a Democratic Party in shambles, trying to pick up the pieces before November’s ballot. This chaos is an indictment of both Biden and his party’s elites.

By running for re-election, Biden selfishly put himself above the party. Back in 2020, he claimed he was just a transitionary figure, a defence against Donald Trump’s re-election and a bridge to the future Democratic Party. That implied he would not run for a second term. But then he proceeded to do just that. He (and his family) knew that he, as an 81-year-old, was no longer physically and mentally up to the job. Yet the vain Biden thought that, even as a shuffling old man, he was the only one in the country who could now beat Trump in 2024.

The party’s leaders – among them the old guard of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, as well as current congressional leaders like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries – are as much, if not more, to blame for this debacle. They have also known – for years! – about Biden’s declining health and diminishing faculties. They were quite happy to have a puppet in the White House who would do what he was told. They cynically thought they could continue to get away presenting this Weekend at Bernie’s frontman for re-election in 2024. Rather than have a messy primary contest, they cleared the way for Biden to enjoy a virtual coronation as the party’s nominee again, without any real debate or contestation (which would have revealed Biden’s poor state).

Biden was made the presidential nominee in spite of a majority of Democratic voters saying, for many months, that Biden was too old to run again. Now, in forcing Biden to withdraw from the race via behind-the-scenes pressure, the party elites will no doubt claim that they are simply following the will of their voters. But what the country is seeing is an incumbent president, whom party members still voted for in the primary, being brought down by a palace coup. And this is happening in the party that says it is defending democracy.

The 27 June debate was the pivotal moment in this farce. It was at that moment that the party leaders realised they could no longer convince the public of this charade. Biden’s poll numbers, already bad, plummeted after that performance. None of those Democratic higher ups who have since been urging Biden to quit cared about his health – what really led them to pull the plug on Joe was the realisation that he was going to lose badly to Trump.

The US is now in uncharted territory. For a start, who is in charge in the White House? Biden has revealed himself to be non compos mentis. Yet while he has decided to forgo the re-election campaign, he is staying put in the Oval Office. For the US to have to face a foreign-policy crisis without a commander-in-chief would be very challenging – it almost invites one of America’s adversaries to do something. The country will be holding its breath until a new president is inaugurated in six months’ time.

There’s also no precedent for how the Democrats will choose a replacement for Biden. An open nominating process at the Democratic National Convention in August would seem to be a recipe for anarchy. The alternative would be to – again, undemocratically – hand the nomination to vice-president Kamala Harris, who Biden endorsed on Sunday.

But backing Harris may be a case of jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. She is as unpopular as Biden, an intellectual lightweight with an awkward demeanour (that cackle) and incoherent speaking style (‘unburdened by what has been’). When she ran for the Democratic Party nomination in 2019, her campaign bombed so badly that she barely registered in the polls, failing even to obtain the support of her home state of California. She had to drop out before the first contest in Iowa. Today, she will also be saddled with all of the Biden administration’s failures, especially the massive flows of people coming across the southern border – a problem ‘border czar’ Harris did nothing to address.

The big obstacle Democrats face in leaping over Harris is identity politics. Biden made it clear that he picked her as his running mate because she was a black woman. She became the first DEI vice-president, a mediocrity who otherwise would never have been considered. Now, as Biden withdraws, there will be a section of the party that will accuse any other candidate who dares challenge her of being racist for trying to deny Harris the nomination.

Now, as they slowly pull the knife out of Biden’s back, the party elites will begin to praise him for his ‘historic’ achievements. That’s a joke, as there was nothing of positive substance accomplished under Biden. His administration consisted of little more than managerialism wrapped in woke politics. The spending programme Biden brags about led to a spike in inflation and a drop in workers’ living standards. It also created a huge debt level that undermines America’s ability to lead in the world.

While the Democrats are in a deep mess of their own making, Trump and the Republicans just concluded a very upbeat national convention. This doesn’t mean that Trump will easily win in November, but the Democrats’ very public implosion gives voters another reason to reject them.

Sean Collins is a writer based in New York. Visit his blog, The American Situation.