It shouldn’t shock anyone that top Democrats are
concerned about Joe Biden. The June 27 debate obliterated the party’s
hopes for a successful election season. The top of the ticket got
exposed, with questions about Biden’s fitness for office permeating the
national discussion. Even with an ABC News interview and Biden’s NATO
presser tonight, it hasn’t wiped away most of the questions about the
president's health—he referred to Donald Trump as the vice president.
Joe Biden never had the chops to be president. Obama knew it, so he
quickly backed Hillary to succeed him, a move that the Delaware liberal
has resented immensely. It’s also why he hasn’t yielded advice from his
former boss or those around him. Nancy Pelosi also poked the bear this
week, coming right to the edge of calling on Biden to drop out.
Reportedly, both Democrats are in contact with one another, colluding to
find a way to get Biden to exit the race. The problem is that they
don’t know how to make that happen, which is the predicament facing
everyone in the ‘dump Biden’ camp.
In a lengthy CNN piece by Jeff
Zeleny and Edward Isaac-Dovere, the article delves into the Obama
factor behind the scenes, where the two men have spoken less since the
Biden presidency and where public displays of affection belie a cooler
relationship. Obama is also aware that any further involvement besides
his reported hands-off approach in sifting through this mess engulfing
the Democratic Party will likely find its way into a Trump rally. The
last thing Obama wants is for Trump, whom he despises, to say something
along the lines of ‘even Biden’s former boss, Obama, wants him out.’
He’s also aware that he could be viewed as being the proverbial Brutus
in pushing out his former VP (via CNN):
Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi have spoken privately about
Joe Biden and the future of his 2024 campaign. Both the former
president and ex-speaker expressed concerns about how much harder they
think it’s become for the president to beat Donald Trump. Neither is
quite sure what to do.
Democrats are desperate for the
dispiriting infighting to end so they can get back to trying to beat the
former president. And they’re begging either Obama or Pelosi to help
them get there, aware that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer doesn’t
have the trust of Biden and that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries
doesn’t have the depth of relationship to deliver the message.
CNN
spoke with more than a dozen members of Congress, operatives and
multiple people in touch with both Obama and Pelosi, many of whom say
that the end for Biden’s candidacy feels clear and at this point it’s
just a matter of how it plays out, even after Thursday night’s news
conference.
[…]
Many of Pelosi’s colleagues are hoping
that she can bring an end to the turmoil that has engulfed Democrats for
the last two weeks. And to a good chunk of them, that end can come if
and when she tells Biden that he has to drop out.
Pelosi has
spoken to Biden since the debate, but in the time since, the California
Democrat has made clear that she does not see Biden’s decision to stay
in the race as final. But she, through an aide, declined to comment
further.
[…]
But Obama’s deepening skepticism about his friend’s ability to win reelection is one of the worst kept secrets in Washington.
[…]
In
conversations with some Democrats over the past two weeks, Obama has
swatted away the notion that he could push Biden one direction or the
other even if he wanted to, which underscores their long-running
complicated, yet loyal, relationship. And it’s been complicated even
further during their time apart: since leaving office behind – and their
weekly lunches at the White House for eight years – the two have spoken
far less than some of their advisers have often intimated.
If
the former president did try to steer Biden to get out, people who know
Obama say, he is aware the prism through which it could be seen. Biden
has written that he felt Obama was not encouraging of his jumping in
late to the Democratic primaries in the months after his son Beau died
in 2015. Though Obama believes that he was trying to help his then-vice
president focus on his grief and not wade into what would have been an
incredibly hard primary campaign against Hillary Clinton and Bernie
Sanders, that may not be how another conversation would go.
“Biden
would say, ‘Well, Mr. President, you already used that chip in 2015 and
it got us Donald Trump,’” speculated a longtime 2020 campaign aide. “I
think it would harden him more.”
One point of contention is the damning New York Times op-ed by George
Clooney, who called on Biden to drop out, saying that the Biden we all
saw on debate night was the president the nation witnessed getting
demolished by Trump. Clooney was in contact with Obama before the op-ed
was published. While the former president didn’t explicitly order the
essay, he didn’t try to dissuade him from writing it—a pure Tony Soprano
move.
Yet, the lack of action on this topic is a throwback to one
of Obama’s biggest flaws, which was to become afflicted by paralysis by
analysis. If Biden can’t win, and there are scores of Democrats who
think it’s over, then how do they prevent going off the cliff?
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