The Democrats will struggle to throw Joe Biden overboard

After his disastrous outing against Donald Trump on Thursday evening, Joe Biden’s surrogates are scrambling to salvage something from the wreckage. “I would never turn my back on President Biden’s record,” California governor Gavin Newsom said. “I would never turn my back on President Biden, and I don’t know a Democrat in my party who would do so, especially after tonight.”

Jill Biden might consider her own candidacy

Don’t believe a word of it. Seldom has the famously fractious Democratic Party been in more turmoil than over the question of whether Joe must go. Democrats, who were expecting a donnybrook on Thursday only to watch Biden cower mutely before Trump, are in panic mode.

After months of pooh-poohing concerns about Biden’s health or mental state, stalwart liberal publications such as the Atlantic are suddenly studded with headlines such as “Dropping Out Is Biden’s Most Patriotic Option,” “Someone Needs to Take Biden’s Keys” and “Biden’s Loved Ones Owe Him the Truth.” After three New York Times’s columnists called on Biden to quit yesterday, the publication’s Editorial Board descended from Mount Sinai and declared: “To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race.” Slightly further to the right, the neoconservatives who make up the NeverTrump faction are also sending up distress signals. Writing in the Bulwark, for example, William Kristol and Andrew Egger declared:

We will be told there’s no way Joe Biden will step aside. That will be the excuse of senior statesmen and prominent Democrats for not making a serious effort to persuade him to do so. But their “realism” is merely a cloak for fatalism and defeatism.

But will the Democrats really have the gumption to throw Biden overboard? Or will the establishment rally around him for one last run against the dreaded Trump?

The easiest way to install a successor would be for Biden to resign the presidency this weekend in a national television address. Vice President Kamala Harris would automatically assume his position and she could select someone like Senator John Fetterman — a pro-Israel Democrat — as her vice president. In her interview on CNN following the debate, Harris displayed some real chops in attacking Trump and deflecting from Biden’s woeful performance. Like Shakespeare’s Hermia, though she be but little, she is fierce.

Harris has national name recognition but what there is of it has not been altogether salubrious. She was tasked with solving the border crisis by Biden, and has failed to make much of a mark during his presidency, apart from garnering headlines for periodically purging her senior staff.

If many Democrats are not wholly enamored of Harris, a number have been casting covetous gazes at Democratic governors such as Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer. An open convention in Chicago would enable the delegates to return to the days of yesteryear when multiple votes were often taken before a presidential candidate was selected. The charismatic fifty-six-year-old Newsom is a gifted verbal pugilist who held his own recently in a primetime debate with Florida governor Ron DeSantis and who has established a national donor network. He has made some mistakes, including an ill-advised twelve-person dinner at the exclusive restaurant the French Laundry during the height of Covid, drawing a torrent of gleeful calls of liberal hypocrisy from the political right. Still, Newsom might possess unique insights into the Trump camp: one piquant aspect of a Newsom run would be that as mayor of San Francisco, he was married from 2001 to 2006 to the current inamorata of Donald Trump Jr., Kimberly Guilfoyle.

Another strong contender is Whitmer, who stood up to the Trump White House during the Covid crisis and who engineered a Democratic takeover of the Michigan House and Senate this past April. Perhaps the most telling sign of her ambitions is the release this summer of a memoir called True Gretch which has been trailed with perfect timing in People this week. The magazine sold their “exclusive” as follows: “Whitmer reflects on the lessons she learned from her Grandma Gretchen, and how those helped her stay grounded in the face of commentary on her body while running for office.” Inspiring stuff…

Then there are the perennial whispers about an Obama return to the White House — specifically, Michelle. Word is that she is already disenchanted with Biden over his opprobrious treatment of her friend Kathleen Buhle, a political advisor and former wife of Hunter Biden. If revenge is a dish best served cold, then Michelle supplanting Biden would be arctic indeed. To retain power, however, Jill Biden might consider her own candidacy. The truth is that she already appears to be guiding her own husband through the crepuscular phase of his presidency. The temptation to exercise power is likely well-nigh irresistible.

All of this depends on Joe Biden’s willingness to exit the political stage, which appears to be essentially nil. At a rally in North Carolina yesterday, Biden emerged as a kind of shape-shifter: he riled up the crowd with the jabs at Trump that were missing the previous evening. “He set a new record for the most lies told in a debate!” Biden shouted. “He lied about how he had nothing to do with the insurrection on January 6!”

Might Biden, in fact, be on the comeback trail? Curt Mills, the editor of the American Conservative, says so:

It’s time once again to buy Biden low. The idea that the incumbent president — and a man more moderate than his party — isn’t the toughest match-up for Trump is loopy stuff. They’re not going to replace him. And they shouldn’t.

So far, the establishment appears to be rallying around Biden. On X, Barack Obama opined:

Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know. But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself.

With a second debate looming in September, Biden has one last chance to demonstrate that he has the right stuff. Meanwhile, Trump, who has sent the Democratic Party into an emotional frenzy over its standard-bearer, is in the driver’s seat. He campaigned on Friday in Virginia. If he can win the Old Dominion state, which has regularly voted for Democratic presidents, he will be on his way to an electoral landslide, no matter what Democrat he runs against.

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.