By Jim Geraghty
Friday, January 17, 2025
We knew the general gist of how Democratic lawmakers lost
all faith in the octogenarian Joe Biden in the past year, and how Biden’s
abysmal performance on the debate stage the night of June 27 prompted a panic.
But this morning’s New York Times offers Chuck Schumer’s version
of events, and the details are pretty jarring:
If there were a secret ballot among
Democratic senators, Mr. Schumer would tell the president, no more than five
would say he should continue running. Mr. Biden’s own pollsters assessed
that he had about a 5 percent chance of prevailing against Donald J. Trump, Mr.
Schumer would tell him — information that was apparently news to the president.
And if the president refused to step aside, the senator would argue, the
consequences for Democrats and Mr. Biden’s own legacy after a half-century of
public service would be catastrophic. . . .
When [Schumer] asked whether Mr.
Biden had talked to his pollsters about his chances of winning the race, the
president shook his head.
“Well, I have talked to them,” Mr.
Schumer said. “My guess is you have about a 5 percent chance. None of your
pollsters disagree with me.” [Emphasis added.]
The Wall Street Journal reported last month that
Biden never met with, and apparently never heard directly from, his own
presidential campaign pollsters:
Press aides who compiled packages
of news clips for Biden were told by senior staff to exclude negative stories
about the president. The president wasn’t talking to his own pollsters as
surveys showed him trailing in the 2024 race. . . .
The president’s team of pollsters
also had limited access to Biden, according to people familiar with the
president’s polling. The key advisers have famously had the president’s ear in
most past White Houses.
Biden’s pollsters didn’t meet with
him in person and saw little evidence that the president was personally getting
the data that they were sending him, according to the people.
Why? Why did Biden’s pollsters never meet with him? Did
Biden’s closest advisers and handlers believe he couldn’t handle receiving bad
news?
Getting bad news is a big part of the job of the
president!
This does explain Biden’s recent nonsensical insistence that if he had stayed in
the race, he would have beaten Trump. Apparently, Biden didn’t realize he
was losing, and losing badly, until shortly before he withdrew from the race.
And he may well have forgotten that already.
Also in the Times article:
“Mr. President,” Mr. Schumer said
then, “the only way you’re going to save this is to show up day in and day out,
with unscripted town halls. And people will be able to smell if it’s
spontaneous, and it will show that this was a one-off.”
Mr. Ricchetti assured Mr. Schumer
that the president would put doubters at ease when he participated in a news
conference after a NATO summit in Washington the next week. But the majority
leader was not at ease.
“That’s not even close to good
enough,” he fumed.
That was the NATO summit where Biden,
introduced Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin.”
Even congressional Democrats doubted that Biden himself
was actually making the decisions in the White House:
Democrats on Capitol Hill seethed.
In a closed-door lunch the next day, senators said the president was being
selfish. They questioned whether he had even written the letter himself, or
whether his aides or maybe even his son Hunter had written it for him. . . .
The July 11 meeting was grim.
Democratic senators, even normally reserved ones who were close with Mr. Biden,
erupted. The usually quiet Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a West Point
graduate and former paratrooper, said he could no longer support his commander
in chief unless Mr. Biden could produce two neurologists to issue a public
report saying he was fit to serve, and then hold a news conference where anyone
could ask questions.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode
Island told Mr. Biden’s aides that the silence from the majority of Democratic
senators should not be interpreted as a sign of support. It was out of respect
and affection to allow Mr. Biden time to gracefully exit the race, but it would
not last forever, he said, because if they continued to vouch for his fitness,
they would be “lying.”
So elected Democratic officials either knew Biden was
mentally no longer capable of handling his duties, or had serious doubts, but
held their tongue. And they wonder why the country doesn’t trust them anymore!
No comments:
Post a Comment