Joe Biden remains deeply resentful of Nancy Pelosi for pressuring him to step down as President, believing he could still have defeated Trump. Despite their decades-long alliance, Biden harbours grudges against Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and even Obama, who he feels betrayed him. Pelosi’s pragmatic fears for the Democratic Party led to her intervention, while Biden’s reluctance to step aside jeopardized the party’s future. Now, his legacy hangs in the balance.
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R.W. Johnson
Joe Biden is apparently still furious with Nancy Pelosi for having forced him to step down as President. ___STEADY_PAYWALL___ They have been political allies for fifty years and Biden still feels that but for Nancy’s “disloyalty” he could have remained President and still beaten Trump. Biden is nursing similar resentments against the leader of the Senate Democrats, Chuck Schumer, and is angry that Obama didn’t tell him directly to stand down although he was saying privately that after his disastrous debate performance, Biden couldn’t win. To show just how miffed he is Biden isn’t going to stay at the Democratic Convention to hear Obama’s speech, which is bound to be its oratorical highlight.
That this is so is, sadly, just one more piece of an old man’s folly. All three of these Democrat leaders stayed publicly loyal to Biden after the debate disaster but they all knew they had to face facts. No one in American politics is more hard-nosed than the House Speaker or Minority Leader, both roles that Pelosi had filled. Her standard reply to Congressmen upset at their prospects was “No whining. Just winning.” She knew exactly how damaging Biden’s presence on the ticket would be to Democratic congressmen in marginal seats and how that would affect the pyramids of power called Congressional committees. Worse still, there were Democratic Senators and state level representatives right across the country who would feel the cold draught of defeat. Not only would that be a thorough disaster for the party but it risked the terrible prospect of a Trump victory reinforced by a Republican majority in both houses. Armed with that there would be simply no knowing what Trump might do.
In the end it was Pelosi’s fears of what a Biden candidacy might do to the party that carried the day. There was no way to convince Biden that he himself would lose, but he could be prevailed upon not to hurt the party and the careers of others. He stubbornly refused to look at a replay of his TV debate disaster and continued to try to pass it off as something that had happened because he had been tired.
The truth is that Biden had, throughout his career, been a B-list politician, desperate to be President but wholly lacking the necessary public appeal. (It didn’t help that he was Senator for Delaware, the second smallest state.) In 2020 he fared poorly in the primaries and it looked like his third presidential bid would share the fate of the first two when the influential South Carolina black leader, Jim Clyburn, came out for him. Clyburn simply said that a man who had been willing to be the loyal VP of the first black President was a man worthy of black voters’ trust. Given the crucial importance of the black vote to the Democrats that effectively settled the matter. One can understand why Trump often referred to Biden’s presidency as Obama’s third term. It was thanks to Obama’s coat-tails that Biden had become Vice President and those same coat-tails now gave him the nomination – and made him President. Not surprisingly, having been flukishly given his chance at last, Biden wanted to hang on.
On November 20, 2023 Biden turned 81 – and he was already the oldest President in US history. In 1960 Kennedy made much of the need for a new generation to take power – after all, Eisenhower was 70. Reagan then set a new record by finishing his second term at age 77. But there’d never been an 80 year old President before. And no one ever imagined that someone aged 82 would try to embark on a fresh four year term. Indeed, the idea was so outrageous that according to all the rules of normalcy and rationality Biden should have made it clear some way back that he wouldn’t attempt to run again.
American Presidents are understandably reluctant to say they are not running again, for fear of becoming lame ducks. Even so, Biden should have made his decision not to run by March 2024. This would have allowed the Democrats time to measure a number of potential candidates through the primary process and it is quite possible that they would then have come up with a stronger nominee than Kamala Harris. But by hanging on to the last minute Biden deprived the party of that choice and effectively ensured that Harris would get the nomination.
The whole drama is Shakespearean, with Biden the ageing King Lear, raging against the indignities visited upon him by the passage of time and the hollowing out of his kingly powers. Yet it has to be said that by thus clinging on far past any reasonable limit, Biden was both selfish and irresponsible. His anger now against Pelosi, Obama and Schumer is just par for the course. They are all true pros and did what they had to do. If letting Trump win was to endanger democracy there could be no argument for putting forward a Democrat candidate unable to finish his thoughts or sentences.
The unfortunate result is Kamala Harris. Thus far she has campaigned – if you can call it that – mainly by being cheerful and energetic. She has flip-flopped so often on policy that she is clearly scared of having to answer questions about that. She has studiously avoided both press conferences and sit-down interviews with the press. Thus far she has got away with this only because of the media’s extraordinary indulgence – Time magazine put her on the cover and ran a long and flattering article about her, but got no interview with her and couldn’t even produce a single fresh quote from her.
This sort of vacuity cannot last, though. At last she is now being forced to come forward with the odd policy proposal but the fact is, of course, that she has never been a Congresswoman and was only briefly a Senator. As she repeatedly makes clear, her only expertise is in being a prosecutor. She has virtually no knowledge of, let alone expertise in, the arcane workings of the Washington policy circus. She commands little respect on Capitol Hill and would find it extremely difficult to get anything through Congress. She would, both in domestic and foreign policy, be almost completely in the hands of seasoned Democrat advisers. This is a throwback to the age of machine politics when the machine decided everything important and candidates merely presided over that. (When the Democratic machine candidate, Abraham Beame, ran for mayor of New York in 1974 it was said that he was a candidate who could walk through his own campaign headquarters entirely unrecognized.)
That is, if she were lucky enough to win. Before Biden withdrew polls showed that 49% of Americans said they didn’t want another Biden vs Trump contest and Harris has undoubtedly benefited from a considerable relief factor simply from being a fresh face. The dislike of another Trump vs Biden contest had produced a growing third party vote – for Robert Kennedy Jr, Jill Stein (Green) and the black intellectual, Cornel West. Thus far Harris’s gains have come mainly from squeezing that third party vote and from energising non-voters. It’s not enough. She needs a good portion of Independents. Trump is a meandering, undisciplined and angry candidate but the Republican advantage in the electoral college is quite pronounced. As things stand Harris is running well behind a number of Democrat senators and governors. She is just not a strong candidate. She owes her position to patronage, identity politics and luck.
If Harris wins there will be a huge sigh of relief and Biden will move into a much-praised retirement. If, however, Trump wins a great deal of the blame will belong to Biden. Many Democrats never forgave Hillary Clinton after 2016. Her candidacy seemed to be all about entitlement and it let Trump through. That summarily ended Hillary’s political career. Biden’s career is over anyway but there’s always the question of legacy. Biden hasn’t been a bad President and has some genuine achievements to his name but if his legacy is a second Trump term not much else will be remembered.
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