LOS AGNELES.–Defiant 81-year-old President Joe Biden showed he’s slow on the uptake, unable to see he’s on his way out of the 2024 presidential race. “The question of how to move forward has been well-aired for over a week now. And it’s time for it to end,” Biden told Congressional leaders in a letter. “It’s time to come together, move forward as a unified party, and defeat Donald Trump,” trying to get beyond the crisis that started June 27 when he looked like a train wreck at the CNN debate. Elected officials and the public were horrified to watch Biden, a shell of his former self, mumble, bumble and stumble through the 90-minute debate, embarrassing himself, his party and the country. No foreign leader watching the debate would think anything other than the U.S. president is stricken with age-related dementia, clearly unfit for the presidency and certainly for another term.
Biden’s handlers, especially his 73-year-old wife Jill and 78-year-old sister Valerie Owens, ignore the debate like it never happened, pretending Joe could simply go back to reading his teleprompter on the stump and all would be forgiven. But that hasn’t happened with the hue-and-cry happening in Washington, Hollywood and Main Street, where those concerned about beating former President Donald Trump want Biden to withdraw from the race. “I don’t predict things,” 80-year-old Democrat strategist James Carville said. “I’m just telling you it’s inevitable,” that Biden would drop out. Carville wants Democrats to hold four town hall meetings in different parts of the country to showcase the most popular possible candidates to be selected to run against Trump. Carville sees no way that Biden can compete in the current campaign or last four more years.
Biden listens to 63-year-old Hollywood star and big Democrat fund raiser George Clooney asking Biden to step aside, to give Democrats the best shot of holding on to the White House. Clooney’s remarks followed yesterday’s New York Times editorial board saying Biden must resign for the good of the country. “He [Biden] will come to the conclusion. People will get the message to him. He will understand. His family will understand,” Carville said. Carville was the chief strategist engineering former President Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential race against former President George H.W. Bush. Well Carville likes to take the credit but independent candidate H. Ross Perot took some 20% of the vote away from the GOP, handing the victory to Clinton. Carville still engineered Clinton’s success, still commands at least senior status among Democrat strategists.
Former President Barack Obama’s 69-year-old former senior strategist David Axelrod was one of the first Democrats to question the advisability of Biden running for reelection. Axelrod said recently that as things stand now Biden would lose the November election by a landslide, not a close race. He’s called on Biden to do the right thing and let Vice President Kamala Harris step in and run against Trump. “Mr. Biden says he’s staying in the race, but it’s only a matter of time before Democratic pressure and public and private polling lead him to exit the race,” Carville wrote. “The jig is up, and the sooner Mr. Biden and Democratic leaders accept this, the better,” asking Biden to face reality and step aside. Biden has shown defiance largely because he’s programmed by his wife Jill and sister Valerie to resist all calls from Joe to call it quits.
Biden delivered a forceful speech to the NATO summit in Washington yesterday but it was all from his teleprompter, saying nothing about how he functions in a spontaneous question-and-answer session. Telling Biden to get off his teleprompter, 84-year-old Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Biden needs less speeches and taking his message to spontaneous press conferences and town hall meetings around the country. Biden’s handlers, of course, try to keep him away from the press or public meetings, because of his tendency to make gaffes and verbal blunders like he did at the June 27 CNN debate. Calls for Biden to step down have to do with they don’t see him beating Trump in November. Biden insists he’s the only one who can beat Trump because he did it in 2020. Biden thinks it was his personality and superior political skills that beat Trump in 2020.
Election experts know that the primary reason voters turned against Trump was panic over the Covid-19 global pandemic, watching their family, friends and neighbors drop like flies. Well, there’s no Covid now to blame on Trump, only the Democrat narrative that Trump would destroy American democracy. Biden refers to Trump as a convicted felon but most voters attribute Trump’s convictions to a political Department of Justice and other government agencies going after Trump to stop his 2024 campaign. Carville reminds voters that all Biden’s defiance will eventually give way to the sober reality that he must step aside for the good of the party and the country. “If the stakes are as large as he [Biden] says, and I believe they are, then he really needs to consider what the right thing to here is,” Axelrod said, hinting that it’s a matter of time before the Biden teams gets it.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
