Opinion
Review & Outlook
The Almighty Calls for Biden
The Democratic Party establishment that covered for the President’s decline now wants him gone.
By The Editorial Board
July 6, 2024 7:06 pm ET
Mr. President, the Almighty is on the line. Not the Deity you invoked Friday night in your interview on ABC. The Big Guy appears to be sitting out this presidential race. We mean the closest thing to the Almighty in American politics: the Democratic-media establishment. They want you gone, sir, and the question is when you admit it and oblige.
President Biden’s interview on Friday with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos was a portrait in defiance that won’t stem the establishment campaign unfolding against him. The media that covered for him has turned with a vengeance. The sleuths at the New York Times and Washington Post have suddenly discovered that the debate wasn’t merely a “bad night.” This week they tell us that there have been many such episodes of demonstrable cognitive decline. Who knew?
Well, the American people knew, since they are not oblivious to evidence they can see. They have said so in every poll for a year. Special counsel Robert Hur knew. (See our editorial, “A Tipping Point on Biden’s Decline,” Feb. 10, 2024.)
But the debate has forced the establishment to admit the truth they could no longer deny. The Times, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, CNN, Morning Joe, Politico, Axios, the Hollywood and Wall Street donors—the gang’s all here, moving in sync to cover their coverup tracks. Now that Mr. Biden looks like a loser to Donald Trump, Scranton Joe has got to go.
Elected Democrats have been more cautious, but those defections have also begun. First came the backbenchers in competitive seats, like Maine Rep. Jared Golden. Mark Warner, the Senator from suddenly competitive Virginia, is said to be rounding up colleagues to see if they can ease Mr. Biden out. The goal is to protect Democrats running for re-election in states where a Trump tide could engulf them.
The decisive moment will come when the Obama wing of the establishment turns. Barack Obama’s early post-debate backing—“Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know”—has become studied silence. His former adviser, David Axelrod, all but said on CNN Friday night, more in sorrow than anger, that the end is nigh for the President.
Mr. Biden may continue to resist, as he did on Friday night with Mr. Stephanopoulos. But the longer he does, the more brutal the establishment campaign will become. The President’s every word will be scrutinized for mistakes, his every step examined for signs of Parkinson’s or some other malady. The questions will be who knew what about his decline, and when?
CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Sanjay Gupta, now wants Mr. Biden to take a cognitive test. Mr. Biden said Friday that his daily work is a cognitive test, which is the problem. Here’s how the President answered Mr. Stephanopoulos’s question Friday on his debate performance:
“Yeah, look. The whole way I prepared, nobody’s fault, mine. Nobody’s fault but mine. I, uh—I prepared what I usually would do sittin’ down as I did come back with foreign leaders or National Security Council for explicit detail. And I realized—’bout partway through that, you know, all—I get quoted the New York Times had me down, at 10 points before the debate, nine now, or whatever the hell it is. The fact of the matter is that, what I looked at is that he also lied 28 times. I couldn’t—I mean, the way the debate ran, not—my fault, no one else’s fault, no one else’s fault.”
It’s admirable that he didn’t blame his advisers, but Mr. Biden has a hard time finishing a sentence, much less completing an argument. When he loses his train of thought he deflects with the word “anyway.”
This is not a man who will be able to persuade Democrats that he can stand up to Mr. Trump’s assaults for the next four months—nor persuade the public that he can withstand the rigors of the office and deal with Vladimir Putin until he’s 86 years old.
Democrats know that as long as Mr. Biden remains in the race, the news cycle will be dominated by his infirmities. Even if Mr. Biden defies the establishment and marches to the nomination, Democratic divisions and unhappiness will be an almost daily story. Mr. Trump might help now and then by reminding voters why they dislike him. But there is, to reverse Mr. Biden’s formulation, no deus ex machina coming to save the President’s campaign.
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The backroom conversations are already underway about what to do if, or more likely when, Mr. Biden bows out. The encomiums will be effusive. He will be praised as if he is George Washington at the Chicago convention.
The establishment consensus is already forming that the only alternative is Vice President Kamala Harris. There will be some grumbling that she also trails Mr. Trump in the polls, and she will have to defend inflation and other parts of Mr. Biden’s record. Democrats would do better to have an open contest and settle it at the convention, which would grip the world’s attention.
But the establishment in a party that reveres identity politics will fear taking the nomination away from a minority woman. That argument is for another day. For now the nation waits for Mr. Biden to take the Almighty’s call.
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