Perhaps Joe Biden’s coterie is genuinely convinced the president will be on the ballot in November. Maybe their professional obligations leave them with no other choice but to maintain an unconvincingly defiant posture. Regardless, the Biden team has been compelled to spend the bulk of its working hours refuting the deluge of Democrats assuring reporters that the end is near.
“That is not happening, period,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates told NBC News reporters in response to a dispatch claiming that Biden’s family were resigned to the president’s fate. “Keep the faith.” Joe Biden “is more committed than ever to beat Donald Trump,” the president’s 2024 campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, told the hosts of Morning Joe on Friday. “We are built for the close election that we are in, and we see the path forward.” The Biden allies who spoke to CBS reporter Robert Costa were even feistier. “Sources close to President Biden tell me tonight they’re furious that while the president is trying to recover from Covid in Rehoboth, a pressure campaign keeps picking up speed,” he wrote. “If they want him out, they’ll have to push.”
What do the president’s allies think Democrats have spent the last three weeks doing? As of this writing — the list grows by the hour — over 20 Democrats in Congress have publicly called on Biden to drop out of the race, including a number of frontline House members and the Senate’s most vulnerable incumbent, Montana senator Jon Tester. They are supported by Democratic heavy hitters like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, whose public silence is little more than a courtesy that Biden’s recalcitrance will soon render untenable.
The latticework of activists, pundits, editorial boards, and high-dollar donors that make up the Democratic Party’s power base outside Washington are lopsidedly in favor of his withdrawal from the race — as are roughly two-thirds of all self-described Democrats. The party’s fundraisers report that donors “have all but stopped writing the kind of big checks that sustain campaigns in the home stretch,” Semafor reported. The president’s reelection effort reportedly expects to see its fundraising totals decline by 50 percent this month.
And then there are the polls, which are abysmal for Biden at both the national and battleground-state levels. Those within the president’s orbit who are still putting on a brave face insist that either the polls are off, they are incapable of reflecting the true makeup of the electorate in November, or, least convincingly of all, they continue to show that Biden has a clear path toward reelection. But those willing to break ranks tell a different story to reporters. “At the White House and on the Biden campaign, senior staff members are increasingly worried that Mr. Biden could lose Virginia,” the New York Times reported on Thursday. Virginia! And if the Trump campaign’s decision to devote resources to the Old Dominion State is any indication, Republicans are seeing the same numbers. The twin phenomena of polarization and the nationalization of electoral politics ensure that the swing toward the GOP in Virginia is unlikely to be exclusive to Virginia.
For Joe Biden, it’s over. Indeed, it has been over since the first presidential debate, after which the president’s allies consigned the president’s career to the ash heap. There’s no reversing this. Even if Joe Biden hangs on long enough to outlast the revolt against his candidacy, his candidacy is beyond repair. The enthusiasm among rank-and-file Democrats for his candidacy cannot be revivified. The funds Democrats need to promote its messages and execute a competent get-out-the-vote effort will stay locked up in the bank accounts of party stalwarts who aren’t in the business of throwing good money after bad. Democrats on the frontlines in November will be compelled by their own logic to run away from Biden — perhaps even against him in redder redoubts — hastening the party’s crackup.
It’s already over for Joe Biden. The last person to recognize that reality seems to be the president himself, but he cannot hide from his lot forever. The president’s most indefatigable staffers can rage all they like over the imperiousness of the Obama acolytes in exile and their plan to seize the reins when Kamala Harris takes over. But the writing is on the wall. The only question that remains is whether the president recognizes what he must do in time to stanch the bleeding.
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