Biden's Disgraceful Gambit

The President is throwing down the gauntlet at the feet of his party. Will they take it up?

In the week since Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, the Democratic Party has entered hell. After years of denying reality and hoping for the best about the political viability of a reclusive, historically unpopular octogenarian, the chickens have finally come home to roost. With his already-abysmal political standing worsening by the day and his most plausible paths to victory completely derailed, the reservoir of goodwill that once allowed the sitting president to fly to re-nomination without opposition and receive blind support from his party has been completely drained. The everyday Democratic congressperson, megadonor and voter has finally woken up to the reality that was clear to me more than 14 months ago: that there is nobody alive doing more to help give Donald Trump a second term than his current opponent.

The result has been a pressure campaign against a sitting president without any precedent this far into the election. Every day, we see a new backbencher Congressman calling on Biden to step down, reports of elaborate plots against him at the highest levels of power, and articles about his health and appearance that read more like descriptions of Lovecraftian monsters than political news. But you knew this already. It’s hard to imagine that even the most casual reader of political news could find a way to ignore the endless speculation, debates and arguments about Biden’s future. Even the big man himself has decided to finally grace us with his presence, finally scheduling the unscripted events he has avoided for years (with results that clearly show us why he was so reluctant to do them). The battle lines have been drawn; the stakes as clear as can be. The only question left is the big one: will Biden stay, or will he go?

I decided to wait until Biden’s interview with ABC on Friday to write an article on this question. This wasn’t because I thought that there was any real chance that it could thoroughly resolve the question of his capacity one way or another. There was no way in which even the best performance could erase the years of poor polling and evident troubling his doubters, while the delusional diehards blindly insisting on his viability after the debate are clearly going to continue to do so no matter how much he embarrasses himself in public. I also wasn’t hanging onto what he was going to say about his status in the race, because I knew (and didn’t put any stock in) that he was going to insist that he was still staying in. Like how obvious presidential candidates insist that they won’t run until they finally do, Biden saying he’s not going anywhere is the sort of thing he has to say to keep any of his options open. 

The thing I was keeping an eye on was how he defended himself. Would Biden, like the thoroughly decent man his backers have long advertised him as, make the case for himself in good faith, meeting the concerns of his party directly, even while knowing that he might not be able to assuage them? Or would he, like the malignant narcissist many of us have long feared he is, make a case in bad faith, spewing out lies and disingenuous arguments to gaslight and intimidate his way onto the ballot, no matter the cost?

It didn’t take very long into the interview to see his chosen course of action. President Biden is digging in, and his big plan to stay on the ballot is to terrify his party with the prospect that he could refuse to drop out even if he is mortally wounded politically. It is a very fitting end to the half-century exercise in narcissism that Joe Biden calls his career, and those of us who wish to see Trump defeated must be fully aware of what he is doing. We must be willing and able to see what a despicable game he is playing, and we must stand up to it, or we risk losing everything to spare one man’s ego.

What Is Biden Doing?

The first and most important part of Biden’s “strategy,” which was on full display last night, is lying. Constantly, unreservedly, through his teeth in a way that would make even Trump himself blush. This can be easy to miss, as even the most critical left-of-center outlets have refrained from going as far as to call him a liar. Even the New York Times, which the Biden White House seems to hate far more than Trump these days, only went so far as to say that he “exaggerated” things on Friday. But I think it’s important to call it for what it is, and I will do so here.

First off: the pundits. Or, more specifically, the insane, decades-old narrative that Biden has built around himself so he can feel like a victim at all times.