Joe Biden’s incresaingly obvious declining faculties, along with growing calls for him to step down, didn’t keep the flagging candidate’s decision to drop out of the presidential race from springing its share of surprises.
For instance, many outlets, including this blog, expected him to have exited much sooner.
President Biden made the unprecedented decision Sunday to drop out of the 2024 presidential race, a few months after being declared the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee and just weeks after a dismal debate showing.
“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President,” the 81-year-old embattled commander-in-chief wrote in a remarkable letter that he addressed to “My Fellow Americans.”
“And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.
Related: Trump Shooting Sets World on New Timeline
“I will speak to the Nation later this week in more detail about my decision,” Biden wrote.
“I want to thank Vice President Kamala Harris for being an extraordinary partner in all this work. And let me express my heartfelt appreciation to the American people for the faith and trusty you have placed in me,” Biden said.
About a half-hour later, he followed up the open letter with another missive on X endorsing Harris to replace him at the top of the flailing party’s new ticket.
“Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year,” Biden wrote. “Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.”
Five minutes after that, he urged people to donate to her campaign.
Harris issued a statement several hours later praising her boss — and announcing she would be pursuing the party’s presidential nomination, trying already to sound like the party’s top candidate.
“With this selfless and patriotic act, President Biden is doing what he has done throughout his life of service: putting the American people and our country above everything else,” Harris said of Biden’s withdrawal.
“I am honored to have the President’s endorsement and my intention is to earn and win this nomination.
In light of the strange twists and turns that the 2024 presidential campaign has taken over the past few months, readers can be forgiven for likening recent history to the plot of a hack political drama.
Aaron Sorkin could not be reached for comment.
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All politics aside, good for him for stepping down. The man’s mental state has been deplorable. Let him fade into obscurity in peace.
Seconded.
It’s a pity the party took so long to take his name off the ticket. What they’ve done to him over these last several is just wrong. They tried as hard as they could to gaslight the nation about Biden’s fitness for office, right up until they couldn’t use him any more. Even the process of taking his hat out of the ring is disorganized, as if no one knows what’s going on or thought about the decisions which follow from any given choice. The suddenness of it and the haphazard follow-through remind me a little bit of the unholy mess they made in Afghanistan. I suppose that’s to be expected, when the people we can see are puppets on a string and the puppeteers are still trying to avoid notice and scrutiny. I’m also slightly surprised they didn’t arrange for that “covid” diagnosis to be terminal. I was sort of expecting that.
I think we’ll watch them throw Harris under the bus, too, even while they try very hard to gaslight the nation about her fitness for office. They have to pretend she’s a contender against Trump for as long as possible and yet be ready to pivot to “she never stood a chance” when – barring massive fraud – Trump wins a second term.
“They have to pretend she’s a contender against Trump for as long as possible and yet be ready to pivot to “she never stood a chance” when – barring massive fraud – Trump wins a second term.”
I doubt they’d get away with another round of voter fraud this time, because they’re in no position to do so. With all the problems of the last 3 years, the debate without question showing Biden’s mental decline and a VP more despised than he is taking over as candidate, any victory would look completely ridiculous.
In my view, that’s actually the most sigificant detail about the debate: the fact that it completely destroyed any chance of them securing the election (with voter fraud) within a justifiable margin of error. In 2020 it was possible because they still had the right optics to pull such a trick off. That’s no longer the case this election.
They have no legal methods to pull of a legitimate victory, and any illegal methods would arose too much public suspicion (if I’m going by the reaction to the assassination attempt on Trump). In short, they’ve lost this chess match. Let’s hope they don’t respond by blowing up the game board…
Personally, I think Trump has become acceptable to the powers that are really in charge. Letting Trump win will cost them very little. The Dems do always play to win, but there’s even a broader context to the uniparty.
“Personally, I think Trump has become acceptable to the powers that are really in charge. Letting Trump win will cost them very little.”
Considering how hard they tried to put him in jail before his nomination (his sentencing date was July 11, 4 days before the RNC), then when a Supreme Court ruling delayed his sentencing by months and put in question whether he would even be sentenced at all, someone “just so happened” to try to kill him on July 13 (2 days before the RNC) under very suspicious circumstances (the Secret Service security was ridiculously lax, and the shooter had been in a Blackrock commercial), I don’t think him winning is remotely acceptable to them.
In addition to all of that, they are importing millions of illegal immigrants and recently made sure to strike down a law to keep said illegal immigrant from voting.
Also keep in mind that it’s still a long time until November. We have no idea what else they’ll try to pull.
At this point, they may even be willing to cheat far beyond a believable margin of error. They got away with a ridiculous amount of fraud in 2020 and 2022, so they probably feel emboldened.
“At this point, they may even be willing to cheat far beyond a believable margin of error. They got away with a ridiculous amount of fraud in 2020 and 2022, so they probably feel emboldened.”
Fraud is a lot of work though, isn’t it? It’s just hard for me to be convinced the Democrats are playing to win when Kamala Harris is their “man”. Trump has neutered his rhetoric and JD Vance is clearly a kept man from a globalist perspective. A little humble pie means a lot less work. Trump himself didn’t prove to be much of a threat the first time, if they had been a little more rational about it all.
We’ll see. What I am convinced of is that uniparty that really run the US are divided and confused. If they wanted Harris, it should have happened months ago. It’s not like Biden had a ton of personal popularity either, except with a certain older demographic with memories of the name. It’s quite possible that a fraction of uniparty is “No Trump at all costs” and another has accepted him.
They are also creating a great deal of confusion in the people they depend on to run their empire, as constant leadership and narrative shifts take their toll. Even the most useful loyalists have no idea what to do next. Trump will not be there forever as the Ulimate Bad Orange Man.
Our inept rulers are on track to hand us the best possible outcome, that being Harris topping Biden’s all-time record to beat Trump.
I admit to having given the elites too much credit. A halfway competent regime would have long since replaced Biden with someone more likeable than a diseased hyena. And they wouldn’t have botched the Trump prosecutions.
It turns out this regime is less than half-competent. Much less. All they had to do to head off SCOTUS’ intervention was charge Trump with some felony he committed before 2016. He is a New York construction magnate, so some ambitious and slimy NY DA could no doubt have dug up any amount of bribe-passing, mob entanglements, and union hijinks. Instead, the cargo cultists had a deep-seated need to nail him for offenses committed while president, because that was when he violated their sacred space.
We’re in a strange and terrible place if the gas-lights exploding and leveling half of Angel Street is the best possible outcome. However, I cannot fault your logic. Portions of the Right are still at “They cheated massively, but the system can still be set right because we’re still Americans.” It would take the mother of all black swans to demonstrate conclusively Lady Liberty is a rotted corpse held together by the tatters of her robe.
It took a visit to a small town where life retains a semblance of normality to grasp how dire the situation is. We shouldn’t have to live like this.
Q Boomers deluded most normies into thinking that some Bond villain flipping a switch in an undersea lair is behind the vote rigging. But it’s not that centralized. Instead, it operates like every other function of the Death Cult: Armies of leftoid NPCs programmed by late night talk shows to use any means necessary against Orange Hitler create a standalone complex.
That means the 2020 fraud machine is not only still up and running, it’s even bigger than last time. So we’ll see massive shenanigans in November.
Will it be enough to beat Trump? Let’s hope so. Because otherwise, the normies go back to sleep, secure in the system’s legitimacy, while Trump goes full W starting wars in goat countries.
“Because otherwise, the normies go back to sleep, secure in the system’s legitimacy”
I doubt that. The way I see it, these are the most likely possibilities:
1. The election is stolen again, and yet again, nothing is done about it. Those who are already awake know what happened, but those who are not awake ignore the evidence before their eyes because the Ministry of Truth says to do so. The 2020 election fraud opened the eyes of most who are able to be awakened. Anyone who doesn’t realize (or refuses to believe) that there are massive levels of fraud in the electoral system by now is unlikely to be convinced even by a more blatantly stolen election.
With their ability to steal elections and get away with it cemented, the corrupt Powers that Be continue to ram through their agendas, boast that “democracy has been saved” and crack down on anyone calling out the election as stolen as an “insurrectionist”. Tensions between the “insurrectionists” and those who believe the official narrative of a “safe and secure election” worsen, leading to the possibility of Civil War 2.0.
2. The election is stolen again, but this time the steal is undone by SCOTUS or some other authority because it is too obvious and sloppy to successfully cover up. As a consequence, the fraudulent nature of the 2020 and 2022 elections would no longer be able to be denied except for the most deluded, and the dam holding back genuine reforms to prevent election fraud would burst.
3. Trump wins by margins that are truly too big to rig. He uses his political position, his pull within the Republican Party, and his influence over his supporters to pass election reforms making mass fraud impossible or at least extremely difficult. He also halts mass illegal immigration and signs a bill preventing non-citizens from voting.
“while Trump goes full W starting wars in goat countries.”
Considering that in his first term, he was the first Republican president in decades not to start any new wars, what makes you think he would behave any differently in his second?
Also, isn’t it far more likely that new wars would break out under Democrat rule, considering that the Democrats have been trying to star WWIII for about a year now?
It’s not a question of Trump being more bellicose than other republicans. It’s if he’ll continue his pattern of being more aggressive than his democrat predecessor.
Trump pulled the US out of Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, bombed Syria, and ordered Qasem Soleimani’s assassination. His past behavior demonstrates a bad case of neocon Muslim obsession. And his recent campaign statements indicate that trend will not only continue, but escalate.
The other pattern we’ve seen with Trump is his failure to deliver on any promises to his voters. Some people’s expectation that this behavior will change is what needs expalaining.
Biden keeps being framed as victim of his circumstances. In some ways, yes he was. On the other hand, he spent no 50+ years trying to get to the Presidency. He was on the 2nd string President bench for decades. He and his wife were not going to let a little problem like dementia stop them from getting their “turn”, including completing the 8 years.
As of even the morning of, I was insistent that Biden wasn’t going to quit because of mere media pressure. Do we really think he and his wife never noticed the lack of people at his rallies, etc? Unpopular didn’t matter to them. The prize was the Presidency. I still am convinced of that analysis of the situation, at least from afar.
The suddenness in my very speculative opinion was about a backroom deal. Biden was not persuaded to step down as much as he was offered a deal he couldn’t refuse.
Meanwhile, Kamala Harris is equally disliked or more than Biden. Obviously the power brokers inside the Democrat party do genuinely think can get anyone elected. Either that, or there’s shinigans going on that none of us are privy to and it’s unlikely that the Pravada press will investigate.
There’s a rumor that “It’s my turn” Clinton may go ahead and push aside Kamala as well, so we’ll see. This sort of unstable leadership is what happens when societies begin to collapse.
You’re not wrong. I wouldn’t say he is a victim of circumstance because the unjust circumstances in which he finds himself (assuming he is even still alive at this point) seem to be at least partially of his own making. I say partially because I doubt anyone opts for senile dementia, at least directly. He seems creepy, crooked, and not particularly bright. As a power-hungry scoundrel surrounded by other power-hungry scoundrels, it’s not surprising they would use him as he has probably used them. The abuse, however, remains unjust, even if he is being used by people he would willing have used in turn.
I consider Biden’s entire “presidency” elder abuse and “doctor” Jill the prime suspect.
Yes, it’s fair to assume that the sharks surrounding the Bidens, including possibly Jill herself are using Biden.
I think the hard part with elder abuse is that it’s not quite like child abuse. A child lacks even free will, until a certain age. The child was the result of parent’s actions. There is both innocence and complete dependence on one side.
A dementia stricken man who spent a lifetime chasing after the brass ring and using others only to be used by others might fall into the area of God’s justice.
That aspect of does not justify elder abuse obviously by the people themselves. They will have to answer for that. It’s just harder for me personally to get as angry about, as I tend to see God’s hand working after decades of misspent life.
“Biden keeps being framed as victim of his circumstances. In some ways, yes he was. On the other hand, he spent no 50+ years trying to get to the Presidency.”
“Having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as wanting. It is not logical but often true.” – Spock
Man, the 2020s really have been a decade with a higher-than-average concentration of Unprecedented Historical Events, haven’t they? Why, just a few days ago we had something pretty close to what Y2K was supposed to be, courtesy of someone at Crowdstrike massively bungling it and pushing an update that bluescreened Windows computers across the world.
The 1900-1920’s were the same way.
Come to think of it, so were the first two decades of the 1800s (Napoleon and his aftermath). I wonder if there’s some sort of special effect produced by the turn of a century?
Strauss-Howe generational theory. There’s a time period called a saeculum which amounts to about 85+ years
As Lenin said, “Sometimes decades pass during which nothing happens, then decades happen in a week.”
Seems like we just went through one of those weeks. And it seems like there a going to be a number of those weeks in the near future.
Some day soon, we’ll look back on Biden’s reign as the good old days.
Could be. We’re getting a new round of slang as gibberishy as anything in the 1920s.
Nothing ever happens.
Until it does. That said, the smart money is with you.
>Dems current branding is “it’s time for a new generation to take charge.”
>We STILL haven’t had a Generation X candidate, despite the youngest Gen X’ers now being older than JFK was when he took office.
I guess Kamala is a Gen Joneser, but since that generation is not “official” this means that the narrative is that Joe Biden must step aside so that the Baby Boomers finally get a chance to lead.
Clinton, W, and Trump are all Boomers, so that generation has been in charge for a majority of the past 30 years. Biden is a Silent, and Obama is a Joneser. Your model may need some adjustment.
The last sentence was firmly tongue in cheek, though of course that nuance is often lost in a text-based format.
My point is that painting this as handing things off to the new generation doesn’t make sense because the “new generation” is the same one that has been in charge for decades, as you say. Not just in terms of presidents but in terms of everything.
More evidence for the idea that Boomers will stay in power until they die, and just before that happens they will (reluctantly) hand over power to the Millennials, bypassing Generations X and Y entirely.