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With Kamala Harris conceding (or laying the groundwork for 2028, who can tell) late yesterday afternoon, the media and the Democrats (but I repeat myself) have begun to process their grief.
Oh, who are we kidding. They are looking for someone to blame. And while there will be plenty of blame for the media to spread around, it’s becoming clear that their number one target is going to be the dead duck president himself, Joe Biden.
Right now, the media is busy trying to convince themselves that Kamala ran a wonderful and “flawless” campaign. They will eventually be disabused of that notion, but pointing the finger at Joe Biden is their first stop on the blame train. While the Democrat faithful are speculating that Biden was the reason, the media is asserting that as fact.
Here is The New Yorker with their hot take:
Joe Biden’s stubbornness in refusing to step aside as the Democratic nominee until July is the single biggest reason for Donald Trump’s victory, @IChotiner writes. “Biden’s arrogance remains astonishing to behold.” https://t.co/CeMjEZWQVv
— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) November 7, 2024
The single biggest reason this defeat should fall on Biden’s shoulders is that his stubbornness in refusing to step aside as the Democratic nominee until July short-circuited the possibility of staging a primary, and left Harris as the only real choice to replace him. Enough has been written about Biden wheezing through campaign appearances before eventually dragging out his farewell for weeks after the calamitous summer debate. But Biden’s arrogance remains astonishing to behold: well before 2024, he was quite simply too old to ask people, in good faith, to keep him in office through 2028. He did so anyway, insuring that his age became the biggest political story of the first half of the year. The result depressed Democrats across the country and allowed the Trump campaign to attack its opponent in a manner it hadn’t been able to since 2016.
At least this piece acknowledges that Kamala made some major blunders herself, including her bad interviews after hiding for over a month, and saying that there were no differences between herself and Biden – and that a primary would have tested her to see if she had improved since 2019.
The New York Times, on the other hand, is not nearly so reflective. Everything that happened WAS Joe’s fault, according to them.
For 1,333 days, President Biden was the only one, he repeatedly insisted, who could possibly defeat former President Donald J. Trump again.
He shrugged off his promise to be a bridge to a new generation. He told anyone who would listen that he was the best choice for Democrats even as inflation soared and his approval rating plunged. His faith in himself remained unshaken by the increasingly obvious impact of his age, which left him unable to make an effective case against Mr. Trump.
On Tuesday, Mr. Biden watched from the White House residence as voters rejected Vice President Kamala Harris and ushered Mr. Trump back into power for another four years. Mr. Biden, who repeatedly warned about the danger that Mr. Trump poses, is left with the reality that his predecessor is now his successor, chosen with what is likely to be a majority of the popular vote.
Mr. Biden’s decision in early 2023 to pursue a second term at the age of 80 denied Democrats the chance for a robust debate about who would be the best person to prevent the former president from returning to office for a second term. Mr. Biden waited so long to abandon his re-election bid that Ms. Harris effectively inherited the nomination without having to ask voters their opinion.
Leaders in the party, including former President Barack Obama, at the time praised Mr. Biden’s willingness to give up power and step aside. But many Democrats said they were angry that Mr. Biden’s timing left just months for Ms. Harris to mount a campaign.
“We should have had a primary with all the talent and it would have given us a better chance to educate everyone on who the candidates were,” said Mark Buell, a prominent Democratic donor who supported Ms. Harris’s campaign.
POLITICO joined the pile-on as well.
Democrats are directing their rage over losing the presidential race at Joe Biden, who they blame for setting up Kamala Harris for failure by not dropping out sooner.
They say his advancing age, questions over his mental acuity and deep unpopularity put Democrats at a sharp disadvantage. They are livid that they were forced to embrace a candidate who voters had made clear they did not want — and then stayed in the race long after it was clear he couldn’t win.
“He shouldn’t have run,” said Jim Manley, a top aide to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “This is no time to pull punches or be concerned about anyone’s feelings. He and his staff have done an enormous amount of damage to this country.”
According to interviews with nearly a dozen officials and party operatives, Biden squandered valuable months only to end in disaster on the debate stage. And by the time he decided to pass the torch, he had saddled Harris with too many challenges and far too little time to build a winning case for herself.
Biden, who had at one point in the 2020 campaign pledged to be a “bridge” candidate to a new generation, later based his run for reelection on the belief that only he could defeat Trump — even as he showed clear signs that, at 81, he was not the dynamic candidate of even four years ago. In polling dating back to 2023, more than three-quarters of Americans believed Biden was too old for office.
“They failed to see his inability to step up his game,” Zogby said of Biden’s top aides. “There was this sense that there was nobody out there who could do it.”
The decision froze several would-be successors in place, linking the party to a candidate who his advisers insisted would gain momentum as the race progressed. And despite mounting worries among Democrats about Biden’s effectiveness, it took until June’s catastrophic debate for those concerns to go public. Even then, Biden spent nearly a month trying to salvage his run before dropping out — leaving little time for Democrats to audition new candidates.
“It would have been better if we had had a primary, even if Harris was the eventual victor,” said Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), one of the first congressional Democrats to publicly call for Biden to step aside after the debate. “And it was necessary for the Democratic nominee to separate him or herself from an unpopular incumbent, as much as we love Joe Biden. None of those things happened.”
Instead, Harris inherited the race with just over three months to go, forced to rely on Biden’s campaign infrastructure while developing her own presidential platform on the fly.
I don’t know about you, but I refuse to be gaslit while the media and the Democrats decide to pin the blame on Joe Biden. I have a few questions that should help.
WHO decided that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was not going to be able to challenge Joe Biden in a primary, so he decided to run as an independent? Oh, that would have been the Democrats, as RFK himself pointed out in a letter to the DNC in September 2023 that accused them of “favoring” Joe Biden above any other candidate and cooking the primary rules to make it harder for a challenger to stand up to Biden. Hmmm, September 2023 was more than a YEAR before the general election. Seems to me that there could have been a primary process!
WHO shunned Representative Dean Phillips, who dared to actually declare himself a candidate for the Democrat nomination and challenge Joe Biden in October 2023? For those who remember, Phillips insisted that Biden was too old to run again, and gave up his Congressional seat to run himself to prove a point? Oh, that would have been the Democrats, again! Is anyone else seeing a pattern here?
WHO dubbed the videos of Joe Biden losing his train of thought in the middle of speeches, walking off while in a group, or moving and shaking like an elderly old man “cheap fakes“? Oh, that would have been the Democrats and the media!
WHO insisted that Joe Biden was totally fine, even though we had all watched him go cognitively blank during his one debate with Donald Trump? Oh, that was Kamala Harris! Remember that?
BREAKING: Kamala Harris just LOST it on CNN after Biden's historic downfall at the debate. It looks like Kamala knows her days are numbered too
pic.twitter.com/wBX4Uqb9BA— George (@BehizyTweets) June 28, 2024
Now, Joe Biden is a stubborn, vindictive, and bitter old man who has used his elected office to enrich himself and his family – and the media and the Democrats actively covered all of that up. He has been on a cognitive downhill slide for years at this point, and WHO was it who talked him into running again? Oh, that was Jill Biden! Remember that?
BIDEN: "It's my intention to run again."
Q: "Dr. Biden is for it?"
BIDEN: *silence*
Q: "Mr. President?"
BIDEN: "Dr. Biden thinks that uh, my wife thinks that uh, that I uh, that, that we're, that we're doing something very important."
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 21, 2022
Jill Biden has enjoyed her trappings of wealth and power for nearly four years, and received glowing accolades from the media for it. Will the finger of blame eventually be pointed at her? It should be.
There is plenty of blame to be spread around, and every single person or media outlet that covered up for Joe Biden’s obvious physical and cognitive decline is complicit in that scandal. But for the media and Democrats to try and gaslight us all by pointing at Joe Biden and blaming him for Kamala Harris’s loss, when everyone around him enabled the cover up every step of the way? NOPE. We were there. We saw it all. We watched as Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Barack Obama told the old man that it was over. We witnessed the coronation of Kamala Harris without her earning a single primary vote. We watched her crash and burn in friendly interviews. We heard her call Donald Trump a “fascist” when nothing else was working. The media and the Democrats, along with Joe Biden, Jill Biden, and Kamala Harris, can all share the failure together. But just remind them, they had a chance to have that competitive primary with multiple candidates that they now claim they wanted, but the Democrats made the decision to prop up Joe Biden, and the media happily played along. They have buyer’s remorse after the fact? Hey, they bought the ticket, they took the ride. That they are angry at the end result is their own problem.
Featured image: original Victory Girls art by Darleen Click
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