What can Democrat voters thinking right now? Did Joe Biden's catastrophic debate performance catch them by surprise? How many of them now realize, Joe's not in charge? Somebody else, someone they didn't vote for, is running the country. Do they wonder, or even care, who and for how long?
On April 26th Biden went on Howard Stern's show for a softball interview where he announced that he would debate Donald Trump. CNN authors Kevin Liptak and Betsy Klein described Biden this way.
An animated Biden was prodded by Stern on topics including loss, his childhood, his relationship with his parents, his early career as a public defender... [my emphasis]
Was Biden actually animated, or were Liptak and Klein covering for the elderly man with a poor memory? The Stern interview might have persuaded Biden's handlers he would do alright in a debate against Trump. After all, he would be among friends with Dana Bash and Jake Tapper of CNN. But Biden did worse than anybody ever imagined.
A miscalculation. Or was it? Did Democrat strategist decide to let the voters see Biden as he really is, to get him out by popular demand? Right after the debate there was a near unanimous call for Biden to step down -- for the good of the country. Professional Democrats began talking about Kamala Harris.
[L]et's be realistic here. If [Biden] decides to do this, to back off, he controls his delegates because they are already his delegates. Essentially he'd be king- or queen-maker here. And there is really no other option, okay? It's Kamala Harris. And I kind of think everybody needs to just realize this: It's going to be her, which perhaps is why suddenly you have other Democratic figures saying, as much as they want this, they're nervous if she leads the ticket.
While there's no clear front-runner in terms of a Biden replacement, with four months until Election Day, one obvious possible contender is Vice President Kamala Harris. The 59-year-old is notably younger than both Biden and Trump, who is three years Biden's junior, and she'd be the easiest Democrat for the Biden-Harris campaign to switch to as the party's candidate. Plus, if Biden were to resign, Harris would automatically become president.
Then Barack Obama briefly stemmed the tide, stepping in to post a message on X urging Democrats to stay the course.
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. Between someone who tells the truth; who knows right from wrong and will give it to the American people straight — and someone who lies through his teeth for his own benefit. Last night didn’t change that, and it’s why so much is at stake in November.
Biden is "someone who tells the truth; who knows right from wrong?" Joe Biden is the guy who claimed he earned three undergraduate degrees and graduated in the top half of his law school class. Joe Biden is "someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life?" Please.
In any case, Biden has said he will not step aside, so for now the Democrats are stuck with him. But big money donors are not all happy about it. On a private conference call conducted by James Carville, Paul Begala, and Dmitri Mehlhorn, donors asked about getting Biden off the ticket.
“What can we as donors do to encourage the change in the ticket?” one donor asked, capturing the sentiment on the call. “Continuing to have President Biden at the top of this ticket is giving people an excuse to vote for Donald Trump,” said another. “If you wake Joe Biden at three-o-clock in the morning and ask him who’s president, does he get it right?” fretted a third.
What do the rank and file Democrat voters think? For the donor class, the revelation of Biden's cognitive state from his debate performance shouldn't have come as a big surprise. But they don't really care who they get for a candidate as long as it's a Democrat who can win. Fortunes are made when Democrats are in control. These are the folks who are willing to pretend Biden is honest and competent up until it becomes obvious that his lying and incompetence threatens re-election. Then they will demand a new candidate -- for the good of the country, of course. They know Biden is a liar, but they also know that politicians have to say things that will persuade the voting herd to vote for him. If it happens to be a lie, like almost everything Biden says, they're OK with that. They're in on it.
Then there are those Democrats who think they are part of the elite. They're sophisticated, they're smart. They tune into CNN or MSNBC regularly to stay up on the current correct beliefs and how to argue that Republicans are racists and they're not. They think they're in on it like the donors, and being CNN/MSNBC devotees, they had to have been shocked by Biden's debate disaster. But they are the true believers whose faith is unshakable. CNN and MSNBC will give them all the new talking points. Winning is everything.
Blacks and Latinos are a growing part of a group of Democrats that Democrats have to worry about. They're like the blue collar used-to-be-Democrats. These are the folks that would rather not bother with politics. They just want to make a living as best they can and enjoy life. But they've begun to notice that things are getting more expensive, they seem to have fewer choices at the supermarket. What they're seeing and hearing on the news is not matching up with what they see with their own eyes. They see that illegal immigration is hurting job prospects and putting downward pressure on wages. They notice that crime rates have not gone down. They notice that Biden is a mess.
Democrat party leaders have an answer for them. Censorship. Democrats don't think people should be allowed to see this disinformation about inflation, crime, and other inconvenient things. And yet we have. If we're willing to believe what our eyes and ears tell us.
How many Democrats are willing? Will they allow themselves to see that the media have been hiding Biden's true condition from them? If the media lied about Biden's cognitive decline, maybe there are other things, important things, that they've lied about.
The Democrat base, which includes the legacy media, have been happy to pretend that the border is secure, inflation is non-existent, crime is low, jobs are plentiful, and Biden is the greatest president of all time.
How long can the average Democrat voter do that? The cognitive dissonance has to be brutal.
Of course, there's always denial.
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