Joe Biden and the Circular Firing Squad

By Michael Brendan Dougherty

Wednesday, July 06, 2022

 

The giant sucking sound you’re hearing is the panicked divestment of elected Democratic politicians, progressive activists, and the mainstream media from the Biden administration. The word is definitely out that the president’s stock is going to zero — and it’s time to get out while you still can.

 

Two weeks ago, in a foreboding sign for the White House, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — with a finger to the political winds blowing on Instagram — announced that she wasn’t ready to support Biden in 2024. Then came California governor Gavin Newsom, asking “Where’s my party?” as Republicans and conservatives continue to score political wins. Newsom’s question sparked 2024 speculation for him, and then he stoked the flames even higher by buying ad time in Florida, demonstrating that he could identify and take on the real Republican threat, who is sitting behind a desk in Tallahassee: DeSantis.

 

After the Fourth of July weekend, we are now getting the hilarious reports — usually ones that a lame-duck president faces late in his second term. The first six sentences of Edward-Isaac Dovere’s dispatch for CNN sum it up:

 

Debra Messing was fed up. The former “Will & Grace” star was among dozens of celebrity Democratic supporters and activists who joined a call with White House aides last Monday to discuss the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.

 

The mood was fatalistic, according to three people on the call, which was also co-organized by the advocacy group Build Back Better Together.

 

Messing said she’d gotten Joe Biden elected and wanted to know why she was being asked to do anything at all, yelling that there didn’t even seem a point to voting. Others wondered why the call was happening.

 

That afternoon, participants received a follow-up email with a list of basic talking points and suggestions of Biden speech clips to share on TikTok.

 

That anecdote just gives you a taste of the brackish political depths this White House has plumbed — the ex-sitcom-stars-turned-Twitter-fanatics are fed up! But the heart of the piece is that the White House, like its leader, is slow, disorganized, and sometimes barely responsive. Democratic senators who want to help don’t get their calls returned by the White House. A conference with Democratic governors was thrown together so pell-mell that many did not even attend in person.

 

Biden’s mix of problems all fit together. His presidency was staked on associating Democratic rule with a big economic and mood bounce out of the pandemic and into a low-unemployment, hot economy. When Democrats won the Senate, hopes were raised even further for a transformational presidency along the lines of FDR. Instead, with a botched retreat out of a long war in Afghanistan and record inflation, we have a return to the 1970s. Malaise 2.0.

 

Biden’s pronouncements on this are to blame Putin and to have his flunkies assure the American people that if they can now only afford half-gallons of milk or fuel, they should think of NATO. And we’ll do it as long as it takes. But there’s no plan for victory. Biden has no vision for U.S. proxy Ukraine to win its war with Russia, and so faces the unwelcome prospect of watching a second U.S.-funded army be ground into the dust in two years.

 

When he’s not blaming Putin for inflation, Biden is falsely blaming gas-station owners, oil companies, and corporations for jacking up prices at the pump. This lame talking point has antagonized Jeff Bezos, the prothonotary apostolic of the liberal billionaire class:

The political cashing out of the owner of the Washington Post, one of the world’s richest men, and an important supporter of Biden’s candidacy in 2020, is a significant marker both in the Russianization of American politics — where political parties become just another plaything in the hands of oligarchs — and the decline of the Biden presidency. And if she hasn’t already, expect Laurene Powell Jobs to send vibes down the line at the Atlantic to similarly cut loose from Biden.

 

All of this might seem like an opportunity for the Right, but I have bad news.

 

For now, cutting ties with Joe Biden doesn’t just mean the beginning of a desperate search for a new future leader of the Democratic Party and a potential president. At this moment, progressives are casting about for the means, the will, and the talent to effect a revolution against the features of the Constitution that allow Republicans to hold power at all. Having lost their monopoly on the Supreme Court, progressives hope to chuck the institution entirely. Unwilling to seriously compete for votes in Montana or South Dakota, they want to abolish the Senate as well. Joe Biden wasn’t just the last tie between modern Democrats and the old mid-20th-century coalition that once dominated our politics — he may have been their last tie to this form of government.