Philip Klein writes for National Review Online about Democrats’ latest electoral challenge.
By Tuesday morning, it was starting to feel like the effort to oust President Biden from the ticket was losing ground after he insisted he wasn’t going anywhere and a number of prominent Democrats came out to forcefully support him. However, it seems now that all Biden’s team managed to do was to apply a tourniquet to stop the bleeding, but not to resolve the underlying injury.
Bad news keeps coming. Swing-state polls show Biden falling further behind Trump, and a number of Democrats have come out with skeptical statements both publicly and privately, ranging from telling him to drop out to expressing concerns about his ability to beat Donald Trump. And now NBC is reporting that fundraising is suffering, quoting one source as saying, “The money has absolutely shut off.”
The two biggest developments came this morning, as Representative Nancy Pelosi said, “It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run” — outright ignoring the fact that Biden has already won all the primaries and has declared that only the Lord Almighty could convince him to drop out of the race. Then, actor George Clooney not only said Biden shouldn’t run, but revealed that Biden was demonstrating the same sort of mental decline at the $30 million Hollywood fundraiser the actor had helped organize as he did at the debate (which was about a week and a half later).
This is shaping up to be the worst of all worlds for Democrats. Had Biden swiftly dropped out after the debate, Democrats could have moved on to a plan B by now. Alternatively, Democrats could have all rallied around Biden, went with the “bad night” excuse, and the issue of the nomination would have been resolved (even if the issue of the mental fitness was not).
What’s happening now, however, is that enough Democrats are backing Biden that he is feeling no real pressure to drop out.
