The Left Has to Replace Biden. Here’s Why They Can’t.

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by Revolver

It’s taken almost as a given. Sure, Joe Biden might be clueless, senile, gruesomely unpopular, and at death’s door. Sure, he might be way down in the polls against Donald Trump, trailing like he never did at any point in 2020. Sure, his presidency might look doomed. But Americans can’t really look forward to Biden’s well-earned defeat in a 2024 rematch with Trump for one simple reason: because they won’t let him actually be the Democrat nominee come November.

“They?” Yes, They.

You know, the cabal that lurks behind the Democratic Party, setting its agenda and coordinating all its acts to give the superficial appearance of popular democracy when in fact a tiny elite is very much in control. Those people.

Podcaster Joe Rogan said what millions of ordinary Americans were quietly thinking two weeks ago when he predicted an imminent switcheroo in favor of Gavin Newsom.

There’s no fewer than four “they”s in that minute-long clip. “They” will remove Biden, and “they” will install Gavin Newsom in his place.

On the night of Super Tuesday, Vivek Ramaswamy (a Revolver favorite) argued that “they” are preparing to shove Biden aside after tricking Republicans into fixating on Biden’s particular failures instead of offering an agenda independent of Biden:

A few weeks ago, Nikki Haley (who recently suspended her campaign) publicly predicted that Joe Biden would vanish off the 2024 ticket right about… now:

It is not just Republicans entertaining such thoughts.

There are increasing indications of very public buyers’s remorse within the American left. Instead of trying to smear Special Counsel Robert Hur and debunk his report highlighting Biden’s cognitive decline, the press treated it as a huge story, with the New York Times all but saying Biden should step aside and commissioning polls that show voters feel the same way. In Washington, the night of Hur’s report, Biden held an impromptu press conference so disastrous and so avoidable that one has to wonder if somebody on his staff tricked him into it in the hopes it would ruin him.

According to a Rasmussen survey at the end of February, nearly half of the public thinks Biden will be out by next November, with Michelle Obama the most popular choice to replace him.

It’s all a tempting thing to believe, not because it’s an attractive prospect in its own right but because it would at least suggest the world makes sense. After all, how could a serious nation be led by an octogenarian with such a manifestly degraded mental condition as to be deemed, like a child, to be cognitively incapable of criminal responsibility? The lamentable truth of it all, of course, is that we are not a serious nation. But wouldn’t a joke nation such as ours, precisely because it has become a joke, at least want a serious-looking figurehead? There is indeed something uncomfortably and improbably honest about the flagrant consonance between the inner and outer appearance of our corroded body politic.

At any rate, the implicit expectation of those cited above is that “they”—that  is, the establishment—will simply get rid of Biden. On a surface level, it would appear that the system has not only the motive but also the means. Recall the remarkable swiftness and efficiency with which the Democrat machine effected a consolidation around Joe Biden in the 2020 Democrat primary. Biden, a two-time failed candidate, took 4th in Iowa and a humiliating 5th in New Hampshire. In Nevada, he finished second but also lost to Bernie Sanders by more than 20 points. But suddenly, after a win in South Carolina, everything almost magically fell into place. Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar dropped out abruptly and endorsed Biden; the party establishment rallied to him, and suddenly Biden was the overwhelming favorite who proceeded to crush Sanders for the nomination.

In 2020, “they”—Democrat  movers and shakers, operating behind the scenes—anointed Biden. So surely, “they” could do it again, right?

Not so fast. The forces that were able to manipulate the Democratic Party so effectively four years ago have lost their edge in 2024, and whatever hope the party had of replacing Biden has actually been squandered through sheer cowardice and inaction. Simply put, the Democrats have sleepwalked into a disastrous position in which they can’t live with Biden and can’t get rid of him—at least unless he dies or voluntarily steps aside. Otherwise, the regime is stuck with the Old Man.

All jokes about “they” aside, who actually is the “they” that people imagine removing Biden? Some imagine an omniscient but invisible force guiding all of politics, but the truth is more mundane: Politics really is a world where many different interest groups battle it out for influence. Sometimes it’s public, sometimes it’s private, but almost always it’s messy. Sometimes, savvy billionaires can call the shots. More often, they find ways to embarrass themselves and squander a lot of money. Michael Bloomberg blew $500 million to buy Kirk Douglas’s last words and win 51 delegates.

So if Joe Biden is going to be yanked off the ballot in favor of somebody else, some person or some group of anti-Trump political influencers needs to make it happen. Let Revolver succinctly lay out some options, both real and fanciful:

  • A late primary entrant swoops in to steal the nomination.

Nope! Besides the fact that several states have already held primary votes, the deadline to put new candidates on the ballot has already passed in the vast majority of states. As of this writing, just six states plus D.C. still allow a candidate to get on the ballot; by the time you read this, it may have dwindled further. Needless to say, even a 100% sweep of those states wouldn’t be enough for some surprise candidate to get the nomination. Even a candidate mounting a write-in campaign at this point would find it functionally impossible to get 50% of delegates, even if we handwaved away the difficult task of actually winning over Democrat primary voters.

Under the existing political rules, as laid out in the DNC’s by-laws, the calculus is simple: Biden is guaranteed to have a majority of delegates in the Democrat primary process, and under DNC rules, those delegates are required to vote for him at the party convention. Under existing rules, he will be the nominee. That leads into Option 2.

  • The DNC something something.

Okay, so nobody else is snatching the nomination under the current rules. But political parties aren’t the government. They can actually rewrite rules on the fly, and that includes changing how a party picks its nominee.

To attentive political observers, then, it may seem like the DNC is the obvious place to put in the fix. Didn’t they do that in 2016 for Hillary, protecting her while undermining Bernie Sanders at every opportunity? So, if the party feels doomed under Biden, why not do the same thing and start juggling the rules to allow a convention switcheroo?

The bylaws of the DNC do explicitly mention that the DNC’s powers include filling a vacancy on the national ticket; such a vacancy is to be filled by “voting … in accord with procedural rules adopted by the Rules and Bylaws Committee and approved by the Democratic National Committee.”

That word is key: vacancy. As long as Biden is around and running, no such vacancy exists. Changing this process means changing the party rules. And that means going to the committee named above: the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee.

Technically, the DNC has many hundreds of members, but the actual nerve center of the party is this committee, small enough to fit into a single D.C. hotel room.

The roughly 30 members of the Rules and Bylaws Committee are far from famous. You’ve heard of Ilhan Omar, AOC, and Gretchen Whitmer, but have you heard of… Frank Leone? Ken Martin? David McDonald? But anonymous or not, this is the body with the power to change how the Democrats pick their nominee.

And this body, as it happens, is stacked in Biden’s favor. Membership in this critical committee is controlled by the chairman of the DNC, Jaime Harrison, formerly chair of the South Carolina Democrats. Harrison owes his position to being chosen by Joe Biden, and as expected of him, he’s filled Rules and Bylaws with reliable Biden backers. A year ago, over loud protests from some sections of the party, the Rules and Bylaws Committee executed Biden’s request to reshuffle the Democratic primary calendar to reduce the prominence of states that are “too white.” They demoted Iowa and New Hampshire (the states where Biden bombed) and elevated South Carolina (the state that rocketed him to the nomination in 2020).

The presence of so many Biden political allies implies, on the flip side, a lack of allies for anyone else. If there really were a viable plot to install Gavin Newsom specifically, it would help to have Newsom political allies somewhere high up in the Democrat Party apparatus. But instead, such allies are missing. That’s no surprise, because he’s not the one who controls the Rules Committee.

In short, the DNC is not some independent actor on the left. It is a body substantially controlled by Joe Biden. Expecting it to change course in order to save the Democrats is like expecting Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to be derailed by the membership of Mar-a-Lago.

  • The 25th Amendment

Ever since the media fantasized about the Trump cabinet foisting him aside, Americans have become enamored with this obscure constitutional provision that was previously just fodder for the odd political thriller. Recently, retiring Republican Ken Buck put forward a pointless resolution that, if passed (it won’t be), would formally call on the Cabinet to declare Biden unable to perform his duties. To do that, Vice President Harris and at least half of the 15 Cabinet secretaries would have to formally notify Congress that Biden is unable to perform his duties. But if Biden sends a letter to Congress disagreeing, it would fall to Congress to decide the matter, and only a two-thirds vote by both houses would be enough to actually remove Biden—an even tougher standard than impeachment and removal (which only requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate).

Now, would that actually happen? Of course not. But, for all practical purposes, if Biden’s Cabinet actually rebelled to the point that a majority publicly declared him unfit, that would likely be so tremendously politically damaging that Biden would have to resign or at the very least stop seeking another term. So, could that rebellion happen?

Oh, come on. No. All reporting from the regime’s own preferred outlets loudly broadcasts the fact that Kamala Harris is intensely disliked by her own staff and has no clear role within the Biden administration. Someone is serving as the source for headlines like these, and it isn’t Republicans:

Just like at the DNC, Biden’s Cabinet and Oval Office are a collection of people who owe their current political influence to Joe Biden. Voting to destroy him is voting to destroy their own power in favor of whoever gets picked by Kamala Harris, a person top Democrats apparently find just as intolerable as you do.

  • Pressure Biden to “voluntarily” retire.

During the 2020 election, the press, Big Tech, and the “intelligence community” pulled off a remarkable feat of sinister collaboration by downplaying the corrupt and criminal activities of Hunter Biden and the rest of the wider Biden clan. In the last three years, this conspiracy of silence has crumbled. Even the Washington Post analyzed Hunter Biden’s laptop in depth. Hunter himself has been charged with several crimes after IRS whistleblowers blew up attempts to slow-walk the case. In the wake of Hunter’s charges, many speculated that this was a tactic for “them” to force Hunter’s dad to step aside.

Of course, nothing happened.

For those who imagine that “they” still have a plan, weaponizing Hunter Biden as a tool to drive out his father still seems like a likely scenario. But in fact, superficial public efforts to pressure Biden against running again only reveal the impotence of this option, rather than its imminent success.

Resigning because your associates are being targeted legally is the old norm in a more civilized political culture. The relentless lawfare campaign against Donald Trump and all his associates since 2021 has exposed the new norm of American politics: When your enemies want you in jail, the last thing you should ever do is voluntarily give up political power. Though few realize it even now, it’s far more likely that the legal targeting of Hunter makes Joe more likely to cling to the presidency and the pardon power that comes with it.

If a Hunter Biden scandal were used to smoke out Joe, then the election itself would be about Hunter Biden and his scandalous behavior; even if Joe wasn’t on the ballot, the immediacy of the scandal would overwhelm everything. And, of course, Democrats know this, which is why precisely zero prominent Democratic politicians are talking about Hunter or giving any life to the House GOP’s symbolic impeachment push. If the Hunter indictment was a Deep State op, then it’s an op that failed.

All of this leads to one final factor.

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This is big. It’s likely already too late to remove Joe Biden from the ballot.

WISCONSIN — It’s already too late to remove Joe Biden from the ballot.

NEVADA—After tonight, the fourth Friday in June, it will be too late to remove Joe Biden.

GEORGIA—Only a few weeks remain before it will be too late to remove Biden from the ballot.

From DailyMail:

The Heritage Oversight project has set their sights on three contentious swing states where they believe taking Biden off the Democratic ticket would not allow anyone else to replace him: Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin.

Wisconsin does not allow withdrawal from the ballot for any reason besides death.

In Nevada, no changes can be made to the ballot after 5 p.m. on the fourth Friday in June of an election year or ‘a nominee dies or is adjudicated insane or mentally incompetent.’

If Biden were to withdraw less than 60 days before the election Georgia his name will remain on the ballot but no votes will be counted.

In Texas, the two party’s nominees have until the 74th day before the election to withdraw from the ballot. Some states, like South Carolina, do not allow candidates to withdraw for political reasons.

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Wait… I got it. This is all a REPUBLICAN PLOT!

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Looks like the dem cabal behind joe being in the WH had been seeing what we’ve all been seeing for years.
Cynically they pretended to discover it at the debate.
Now they (Alex Soros, obama, maybe Jill and others) are plotting a way to get joe off the ticket and prevent Kamala from being his replacement.
Rocky shoals on one side, huge waves on the other.
A tricky path.

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The democrats are screed either way. They lose big to President Trump if he remains on the ballot and the real damage will be down ticket, House and Senate.
If they do replace him, they lose the democrat base vote across all candidates.

We might have reached the sunlit uplands…

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It doesn’t matter. While having an incompetent, incoherent mummy in charge is bad enough, it’s his policies (driven by the far left) that are the problem. Is a new candidate going to open up leases for energy production? Will they secure the border and start deporting illegal immigrants, stop raising taxes, stop reckless and wasteful spending, impose harsh sanctions (again) on Iran or support law enforcement and prosecute criminals, even if they are BLM, ANTIFA or Hamas terrorist supporters? No, because doing that will cost them the REST of their base. Not doing it will cost them the election.

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