Sunday, July 21, 2024

As Biden 'Fumes' at Pelosi and Obama, Here's What May Delay Any Decision About Getting Out


Nick Arama reporting for RedState 

The Democratic implosion couldn't happen to a more deserving group of people. 

They're absolutely out of their mind with the possibility that they might lose because of Joe Biden. But they're the ones who put him there and have kept him there, despite his degenerating issues being obvious to all. If they truly had put the country first they would never have put him forward to begin with. 

The elite Democrats who want him out now don't care now that they've had Democratic voters vote in primaries for Biden, but that isn't stopping them from telling him to step aside. 

This is also a bad road to go down. You don't get to circumvent the will of the people because you finally figured out that the candidate you convinced people to vote for in the primaries is going to be toast in the general election. But once again, the party who claims to care about "democracy" is breaking all kinds of norms with their actions. 

The word is that Biden is "coughing and hacking" -- and fuming --  behind the scenes at what's happening, blaming Pelosi and disturbed at Obama. 

Sick with Covid and abandoned by allies, President Biden has been fuming at his Delaware beach house, increasingly resentful about what he sees as an orchestrated campaign to drive him out of the race and bitter toward some of those he once considered close, including his onetime running mate Barack Obama.

Mr. Biden has been around politics long enough to assume that the leaks appearing in the media in recent days are being coordinated to raise the pressure on him to step aside, according to people close to him. He considers Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, the main instigator, but is irritated at Mr. Obama as well, seeing him as a puppet master behind the scenes.

He has "rising exasperation" with them turning on him and thinking he's going to be defeated and he's ticked off Biden isn't helping him. 

And he certainly noticed that Mr. Obama has not done anything to help him in recent days even as his own former aides publicly have led the way in calling on Mr. Biden to withdraw in what was interpreted, rightly or wrongly, as a message from the former president’s camp. The unseen but clearly felt presence of Mr. Obama in particular has brought a Shakespearean quality to the drama now playing out, given their eight-year partnership.

The report says that while he is "increasingly accepting that he may not be able to" stay in and "some have begun discussing dates and venues" for stepping aside, as of Friday, Biden was still stuck on staying in. 

Yet Mr. Biden bristles at pressure and those pushing him risk getting his back up and prompting him to remain after all. Two people familiar with his thinking said he had not changed his mind as of Friday afternoon.

In privately railing about Mr. Obama and even aides to former President Bill Clinton, Mr. Biden has made clear that he finds it particularly rich that the architects of historic Democratic losses in the 1994 and 2010 midterm elections would be lecturing him about how to save the party after he presided over a better-than-expected midterm in 2022. While one person said Mr. Biden is not irked at Mr. Clinton himself — in fact, he is grateful the former president has been pressing donors to keep giving — others said that Mr. Obama is another story.. 

One thing that might be delaying his getting out is that he wouldn't want to do it before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu comes to Washington on Wednesday because he is "unwilling to give the premier the satisfaction given their strained relations lately over the Gaza war."

How juvenile is that? But that's Joe Biden, a petty small man. I used to think Obama was bad, but Biden is ten times worse in pettiness. 

Indeed, Biden issued a statement on Friday saying he intended to get back on the campaign trail next week, lying about Trump's "Project 2025" which has nothing to do with Trump. 

Mr. Biden pushed back on Friday with a statement vowing to continue the race. “I look forward to getting back on the campaign trail next week to continue exposing the threat of Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda while making the case for my own record and the vision that I have for America: one where we save our democracy, protect our rights and freedoms, and create opportunity for everyone,” he said.

It's hard to get around things like Rep. Seth Mouton (D-MA) who has known Biden for years who said that Biden "didn't seem to recognize me" at the D-Day ceremonies in France. But if Biden were ahead in the polls, the top Democrats would probably be behind him even with that. 

There was even one more leak out of the "Obama camp," dishing on what Obama thought after being at the George Clooney fundraiser with Biden where he seemed to lead him off the stage.  

One former Obama aide who was present that night said that it was clear that the former president was startled and shaken by how much Mr. Biden had aged and seemed disoriented.

But just like Clooney, they didn't say that at the time, they let the media go into this "cheap fake" spin. 

Now they're leaking like mad. But this is all on them, and they deserve the mess that they now are in.