by Ed Morrissey
What can we call a situation where an incumbent president who already won his party’s renomination disappears for several days … and then suddenly withdraws from the race? Especially when the said incumbent had spent the previous three weeks in public insisting he would remain the nominee while his party conspired to pressure him into retirement? And then only withdraws via a tweeted letter, and almost 48 hours later still has not been seen publicly?
We could call it a typical Joe Biden operation, frankly. It’s the Kabul of political retirements. At least no one died and no Americans got abandoned to terrorists in this withdrawal.
The New York Post reached a different conclusion yesterday. Biden didn’t so much withdraw or retire, they claim, as succumb to extortion in a palace coup:
Operatives at the very highest levels of the Democratic Party threatened President Biden with forcibly removing him from office unless he stepped down, sources told The Post.
The well-orchestrated “palace coup” to stop the faltering president from seeking re-election had been in place for weeks, but stubborn Biden fought it every step of the way, a source close to the Biden family told The Post on Monday.
The insider also made clear the anger, paranoia and frustration Biden displayed as the party elite circled around him and piled on the pressure. …
As calls for him to bow out mounted, Biden insisted he would continue, but party bigwigs threatened to invoke the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution.
Before I start poking holes in this theory — and there will be opportunities — the NYP has a supporting theory to bolster the claim. The inexplicable decision to debate Donald Trump as well as the inexplicable timing were both part of a set-up designed to push Biden out of the race. The timing was especially important in allowing the time for the palace coup plot to unfold as planned:
Part of the “elaborate” strategy to remove Biden from the race — as he announced in a shocking letter posted on X Sunday — was allowing him to debate Republican candidate Donald Trump last month on live TV in Atlanta. …
“That debate was a set-up to convince Democrats that he couldn’t run for president,” the source said Monday.
Could all of this be possible? Yes. And to some extent, we saw a weird kind of public ouster take place, negating fifty state primaries and caucuses that gave Biden the nomination with 87% of the vote and 99% of the delegates.
But was this a plot, or was it a panic?
Bet on the panic.
In the first place, the debate also reflects Biden’s strategic incompetence, which has been apparent since his 1987 campaign. Biden has always gotten high on his own supply when it comes to his perception of his intellect. During his entire career, Biden has picked fights with anyone who dared to disagree with him, including randos in bars and, in 2020, an auto factory. Seeing his polling erode and figuring that he could use Trump’s convictions in Manhattan against him in a debate, Biden deliberately picked that fight because he and his toadies convinced themselves that he was smarter than Trump. The early date is explicable as a means to stop his poll erosion and to start providing momentum for his party early rather than later.
Until that debate, there was no plot to replace Biden. In fact, there was a plot to cover up Biden’s cognitive impairment, and the media was all in on it. We had just been lectured about “cheap fakes,” which were basically any video that accurately showed Biden’s infirmities, and the media went all-in on this White House gaslighting. That cover-up had been in place since at least the Easter Bunny Intervention in April 2022 and possibly as far back as October 2021.
Exposing the cover-up certainly wasn’t in the interest of the Democrat establishment behind the Dump Biden movement. And exposing Biden would be the only way to conduct a “palace coup” and force him from office. The Dump Biden movement formed out of panic after the debate, not before it, and even then got conducted in the public eye for the most part.
