If President Biden was hoping to quash calls for him to step down as the Democratic Party’s nominee after his devastating performance in the first debate against Donald Trump last month, his appearance at the official White House Independence Day celebrations will not have helped.
The president greeted the crowd with “Ho, ho, ho! Happy Independence Day,” apparently confusing Christmas with the Fourth of July.
When he went off script to launch an attack on his opponent Donald Trump, he lost his train of thought and fell silent.
Hours earlier, she had said in a radio interview that she was “proud” to be the first “black woman to serve under a black president.”
This comes after the White House on Wednesday had to deny, with some ferocity, reports suggesting that Biden had admitted to allies that he might not be able to salvage his candidacy.
The president bafflingly greeted the crowd yesterday with a “Ho, ho, ho! Happy Independence Day,” apparently confusing Christmas with the Fourth of July.
Kamala Harris is widely considered to have been a disaster as vice president. One consultant suggested voters in key swing states would prefer a “dead or comatose Joe Biden” to Harris.
Later, in a campaign phone call, Biden himself insisted: “Let me say this as clearly as possible: I am running. Nobody is kicking me out.” Yet the rumors continue to circulate.
A bunker mentality has developed in the White House. Biden is rumored to have become so irritable that his closest aides, Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti, are shielding him from lesser-known staff for fear of provoking his temper.
Biden is being more “managed” than ever. Since the debate, his appearances, always restricted, have been even more limited.
Aides are briefing reporters on Biden’s calls to allies to reassure them he’s doing well.
“It’s a good thing I can pick up the phone now,” jokes a Washington-based journalist.
But if form is any guide, it won’t be long before he has another moment of greatness for all the world to see — and Democrats know the next big humiliation could make Biden’s position truly untenable.
Some Democratic congressmen, including Lloyd Doggett (Texas) and Raul Grijalva (Arizona), have said Biden should step aside.
But a strict sense of electoral omertà prevents most from making it public.
What Democrats say in private is another question. There is even a theory that the party has given up on winning in November and is already thinking ahead to 2028.
Earlier this week, Democratic state governors met with their president at the White House, supposedly to “support” him.
But after Tuesday, Nancy Pelosi and Jim Clyburn, two of the party’s most powerful politicians, expressed ambiguity.
“I think it’s a legitimate question to say, ‘Is this an episode or is this a condition?'” Pelosi said, when asked about Biden’s health.
When Biden went off script to launch an attack on his opponent Donald Trump (pictured), he lost his train of thought and fell silent.
“I’ll have to wait for the medical experts to give their opinion because I’m not a doctor,” Clyburn said when asked about the president’s performance in the debate.
Other prominent Democratic figures have gone further. James Carville, the 79-year-old former strategist, urged the party to do “something different.”
Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix and one of the largest donors to the Democratic Party, also weighed in, saying: “Biden must step aside to allow a vigorous Democratic leader to defeat Trump.”
The faction that advocates the principle that Joe must go — the “Bedwetting Brigade,” as the Biden team calls it — is growing, but it must confront some uncomfortable truths.
The most immediate thing is that Joe Biden has already won the Democratic primary process for 2024.
If he continues to refuse to step aside, it is almost impossible to imagine how his critics will be able to hijack his confirmation as the party’s nominee in Chicago next month.
“What you have to understand is that Joe Biden is the Pope of the Democratic Party,” said one Democratic leader. “He is the leader, the unifier. He is not going to be forced to resign.”
It has long been said that the only person who could persuade Joe to resign is his wife Jill. But the First Lady seems even more determined than her husband to keep fighting.
She appears on the cover of this month’s Vogue magazine alongside the headline: ‘WE WILL DECIDE OUR FUTURE’.
It’s not just Jill. The entire Biden family gathered at Camp David on Sunday and urged Joe to stay in the race.
Hunter, the president’s son, a recovering crack addict who was recently convicted of lying to buy a gun, is reported to have played a key role in the discussions.
The only real hope for Democrats who want to sideline Biden is if party bigwigs unite to demand his resignation — a possible echo of the last time a president resigned.
In 1974, during the Watergate scandal, Republican senators persuaded Richard Nixon to resign.
Some say Pelosi, a former House speaker, is the only Democrat with enough clout to force the president to resign.
She has worked with him for many years and shares his very liberal Catholicism.
Others say Clyburn, arguably the most powerful African-American in Congress, has enough influence.
The only real hope for Democrats who want to sideline Biden is for party bigwigs to unite behind a demand for his resignation — a possible echo of the Richard Nixon era, the last time a president resigned.
It was Clyburn who virtually gave Biden the Democratic nomination in 2020, by endorsing him in South Carolina.
Or there’s Barack Obama, the most popular living Democratic politician, who last week issued a quick statement of support for Biden on social media.
“There are bad nights of debate,” he said.
But the relationship between Obama and Biden is complicated. The two men have often argued in private.
And Michelle Obama, the former first lady, is reportedly refusing to campaign for the Bidens because she is bitter about the way they treated her friend Kathleen Buhle, Hunter’s first wife.
But insiders tend to agree that Obama and the Democratic establishment are unlikely to turn against Biden anytime soon, because there are no good alternatives.
If Biden were to drop out and endorse his vice president, Kamala Harris, she would almost certainly win the nomination.
A hastily released poll this week showed Harris now polling better than Biden against Trump.
But many consider her a disaster as vice president. One consultant suggested that voters in key swing states would prefer a “dead or comatose Joe Biden” over Harris.
If Biden were to drop out and refuse to endorse Harris, the Democratic National Committee might have to open the convention to other candidates to assert their rights.
But all of the names mentioned most often have serious limitations. Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, is seen as someone who is untested on the national stage.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s once-troubled private life is seen as a potential liability.
Billionaire Illinois Governor JB Pritzker can fund his campaign, but it would infuriate the Democratic left.
Party bosses also know that reopening the nomination process would likely result in chaos.
Radical activists are furious with the party establishment for its support for Israel’s war in Gaza.
Riots could break out in the streets, as happened at the 1968 convention in the same city, also the last time a Democratic president withdrew during an election cycle.
That year, Lyndon B. Johnson stepped aside and the party machine attempted to install his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, against the will of voters enraged by the Vietnam War.
This year history could repeat itself not as a tragedy, but as a farce.
Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator
