President Joe Biden’s debate debacle has created a rare overlap between Trump voters and Biden voters.
If you’re a Trump voter, Biden’s dismal performance only reinforces your view that Biden is the bigger threat to America.
But if you’re a Biden voter and believe Trump poses the bigger threat, and that Biden has little chance to win after last week’s disaster, then Biden also poses a serious threat by being responsible for putting Trump back in the White House.
Get it? Biden has morphed into a threat for both sides. Democrats are now trapped in a nerve-wracking conundrum that explains the desperate calls among Biden’s followers for him to bow out.
“Though Joe Biden’s debate performance last week was among the most painful things I’ve ever witnessed,” Michelle Goldberg writes in The New York Times, “it at least seemed to offer clarity. Suddenly, even many people who love this president realized that his campaign has become untenable.”
Goldberg has been joined by Democratic royalty—from Thomas Friedman to David Remnick to Maureen Dowd to Nicholas Kristoff and countless others—pleading for replacing Biden with a candidate more likely to beat Trump. For Democrats, as unfit as Biden looks for the world’s toughest job, nothing is worse than Trump. Beating him is job one.
They’re now facing an excruciating double nightmare: supporting a candidate they fear will put their Orange nightmare back in the White House. If Biden ends up staying in the race, how will they pretend to support a candidate they so keenly wish would leave the race?
If the stakes weren’t so high, this would be a Greek tragedy for the ages.
Two factors are exacerbating the drama. One, the Biden camp is digging in and fighting back. They’re calling the debate a single “bad night” and bashing those calling on the president to bow out as the “bed-wetting brigade.” Given that millions saw the evidence of Biden’s mental decline with their own eyes, this continued denial is lacking credibility.
Two, since it’s so late in the game, it’s a monumental task to change nominees, even if Biden agrees to do so. Should they push for Vice President Kamala Harris despite her low approval scores? Who gets to pick the new candidates? What happens if Biden delegates don’t play along? How will they prevent a potential revolt at the convention?
“Finding a Biden alternative would be risky and messy, and there’s no guarantee that it would work better than trying to put on a brave face and drag the current president across the finish line,” Goldberg concedes. “But the Democratic Party’s leaders — the people, let’s remember, who got us into this mess — have no right to condescend to those trying to find a way out.”
Goldberg’s attempt to put all the blame on party leaders is disingenuous. For the past couple of years, as evidence of Biden’s decline kept mounting, her colleagues in the legacy media have shamelessly and aggressively joined the cover-up. They’re as responsible as anyone for the current mess.
As they kept their partisan guns fixed squarely on Trump and his lies, they covered up arguably the biggest and most dangerous lie of recent years—that a leader of the free world showing signs of dementia was “sharp as a tack.”
The staggering evidence displayed at last week’s debate blew up that Big Lie and triggered an instant state of emergency among Democrats. With the majority of registered voters believing Biden is not fit for the presidency, the party is now torn between those who are panicked that Biden will lose and those who claim against all hope that he can still pull it off.
“If you’re in a car careening toward a cliff and can open a door,” Goldberg writes, “you should jump out.”
Yes, but why did it take them so long to see the cliff? Were they so busy fighting the danger of Trump that they never saw, or didn’t want to see, the bigger danger lurking in their own camp? Did they not realize they were being hypocrites and doing what they accuse Republicans of doing? Did they not see how they were harming their country by covering up such critical information as the mental decline of our president?
It’s a good thing the Dems have finally caught up with reality. The problem, for them and for our country, is now they’re way too close to the cliff.
