On Biden’s debate, Democrats have no one to blame but themselves
Democrats' attempts to protect President Biden from scrutiny has resulted in a lack of viable replacements, leaving them stuck with a senile candidate and no bench for the 2028 election.
All the trouble Democrats find themselves in is a direct result of their own actions.
They did what they did — they lied, they concealed the truth and they rigged their own party's electoral process — to protect President Biden. That is why they don’t have a viable replacement for him. That is why we are just four months from Election Day, and only now, when they suddenly realize he must be replaced, they cannot do it.
Democrats revamped their primary system this cycle to protect Biden from facing a situation like President George H. W. Bush did in 1992, when Pat Buchanan challenged him for the nomination. Although Buchanan never won any races, he forced Bush to the right and exposed a rift in the GOP. You don’t need to break your ankle to lose a race when a small rock in your shoe can accomplish the same thing.
There was a chance that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. could have been that rock, had the Democratic National Committee run legitimate primaries. So the establishment killed that idea, declaring there would be no debates and shutting down all challengers. Sure, Marianne Williamson and Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) technically did run, but without Biden’s participation and essentially no campaigning, there wasn’t a real race.
The only measurable result of all this maneuvering was to force Kennedy out of the party, so that he is running now as a third-party spoiler.
This was the progressive establishment's way of circling the wagons around Biden. Any and all allegations of senility or even mental “slipping” by the president were immediately of course dismissed as partisan and false. Real videos of Biden acting in a disturbingly senile fashion were still being denounced as "cheapfakes" as recently as last week.
Anyone pointing out that an 81-year-old might have some of the mental issues that 81-year-olds often have was to be treated as a conspiracy theorist. Journalists and self-styled insiders would shoot back, insisting that Biden was as sharp as he’s ever been.
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said just three months ago, “I've said it for years now: he's cogent. But I undersold him when I said he was cogent. He's far beyond cogent. In fact, I think he's better than he's ever been intellectually, analytically.”
Scarborough concluded his remarks with, “Start your tape right now, because I'm about to tell you the truth. And f-you if you can't handle the truth. This version of Biden intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever. Not a close second. And I've known him for years. The Brzezinskis have known him for 50 years. If it weren't the truth, I wouldn't say it.”
Boy, are they all singing a different tune now.
Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Chuck Todd, Jake Tapper, George Stephanopoulos, Joy Reid, Rachel Maddow — you name the partisan Democrat with a press pass, and he or she has publicly recoiled in horror at Biden’s debate performance.
The same people have also started acknowledging that Biden has been having “issues” for some time. Axios has reported on how the president is coherent for only six hours per day. Bernstein told CNN how insiders, including many in the press, have known this and hid it from the public.
This is as close to literal journalistic malpractice as one can get.
But in the end, the right people are paying the price for their own actions. The left-wing establishment painted itself into this corner by propping up Biden.
Democrats not only have no plan B, but they also have no bench, because the Bidens and their protectors wouldn’t allow one to be populated.
Vice President Kamala Harris is less popular than Biden, who was already arguably on his way to an Electoral College loss before the debate. California’s Governor Gavin Newsom (D) is presiding over an exodus of Biblical proportions out of his state, while being on the wildly unpopular side of every cultural issue aside from abortion.
The Democratic governors of Michigan and Pennsylvania are in (probably losing) fights to keep their states' Electoral Votes in Biden's column, to prove their own viability for 2028, when some fresh-faced Democrat will actually have a clear path to the White House. They are all making plans for the future and are in no position to do anything this year.
Who else is there? The governor of Illinois? Go ahead — name him. The secretary of transportation, Pete Buttigieg? He presided over the collapse of the supply chain, which is still having a ripple effect on the economy.
And even if they could convince Biden to drop out and convince some sucker to get in, their candidate would have an abnormally small amount of cash and about two months after the convention to build a campaign that normally takes two years.
In other words, they have no one. And they did it to themselves.
Republicans have been pointing at Biden’s decline since the 2020 election, when COVID gave him an excuse to run his “basement campaign” to avoid tough interviews. Because Republicans were pointing out the slide, Democrats dug their heels in even deeper.
It might be good politics in deep-blue states to take a knee-jerk stance against anything Republicans say, but it comes back to bite you when the Republicans turn out to be right.
That’s what Democrats have done with Biden’s mental decline, and now they’re stuck. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving group of people.
Derek Hunter is host of the Derek Hunter Podcast and a former staffer for the late Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.).