Democrats get rid of Biden to save themselves, not the country

By CHRIS POWELL

A historian as much as a politician, Winston Churchill foresaw the outcome of events like those of the Democratic Party’s last few weeks. 

“The loyalties which center upon No. 1 are enormous,” Churchill wrote. “If he trips, he must be sustained. If he makes mistakes, they must be covered. If he sleeps, he must not be wantonly disturbed. If he is no good, he must be pole-axed.”

Over the weekend President Biden was pole-axed by the grandees of his party, most of whom had realized that the rest of the party might be pole-axed if he remained at the top of their ticket. 

Only a few Democratic leaders had the courage to express the obvious in public — that the president’s mental and physical decline was worsening, not reversing, the more he tried to regain support. But enough leaders withheld their support and thus echoed polls showing that an overwhelming majority of ordinary Democrats wanted Biden to withdraw. 

Among Connecticut’s Democratic leaders only U.S. Rep. Jim Himes was forthright and candid in urging the president to give up his campaign for renomination. Returning from what turned out to be a politically convenient vacation, Governor Lamont meekly concurred with Himes. Other members of the state’s congressional delegation and the state’s constitutional officers took no position but their lack of enthusiasm for Biden — and their lack of courage — were implied. Maybe privately they urged the president to retire.

They may be lucky if their complicity with Biden’s years of failing intellect and stamina, complicity that for some included claims that the president remained sharp and vigorous, does not become an issue in their own campaigns this year or two years from now. The essential fact is that they would not risk their political careers for the national interest in removing an incapable leader. 

But then most Democratic leaders, including most of those who called for Biden to retire, might have been glad of his re-election despite his disability. Indeed, most now will not complain about his remaining in office for another six months in his diminished condition, which is obvious to the world. (The satirical internet newspaper, The Babylon Bee, imagined the State Department sending a letter to the country’s adversaries asking them to attack only between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Eastern Time, when the president is said to be most alert.)

Of course in pushing Biden out Democratic leaders think the party’s chances will improve with the presidential nomination conferred on Vice President Kamala Harris. Democrats well may hope that the sleaziness of their coup soon will be forgotten by most voters.

But Harris, who arose from increasingly nutty and impoverished California, seems not much better regarded nationally than Biden and has not been vetted much more than, say, the Republican nominee for vice president, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, who has all of a year and a half of experience in government.

In any case Democrats seem to have forgotten that long before his senility became obvious Biden was extremely unpopular because of the record of what the Republicans now may delight in calling the “Biden-Harris administration” — a record of ruinous inflation, declining living standards, a flood of illegal immigration, a proxy war against a nuclear power, social disintegration, rising homelessness, and putting boys and men in female sports, bathrooms, and prisons.

Can Republicans and their erratic presidential nominee, Donald Trump, press these issues effectively without Biden at the top of the other ticket? And are the Republicans and Trump unaware of the fun Democrats might have with the recent Republican convention, whose final night included an incoherent rapper and a cartoonish former professional wrestler introducing Trump’s own interminable descent back into narcissism?

Have the Democrats noticed that Senator Vance told the convention “We’re done catering to Wall Street” just hours after Trump told Bloomberg News that he will consider the embodiment of Wall Street, JPMorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon, for treasury secretary? 

Have Trump and Vance noticed their contradiction? Has even Bloomberg News?  

It’s ready to be noticed, and now that Biden is out, the election may not be over anymore.

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Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)