The Last Days of Biden

It’s not that I want to relive the decision of Biden to step away–which was objectively correct and everyone here who suggested otherwise were completely, horrifyingly wrong. But this Vanity Fair deep dive into the Biden’s team at that time and around this decision….woof. That’s what I would say here, woof. Biden was surrounded by sycophants as disconnected from reality as Trump is. And they couldn’t see it because they wouldn’t see it. This is long and worth your time but here are a couple of excerpts:

What the fuck happened to Joe Biden during the final days of his presidency is a subject of increasingly contentious debate. Angered by his last-minute abdication from the race, Democrats have blamed the president for putting Kamala Harris in a no-win situation, with too short a runway to mount a successful campaign against Trump. Biden’s advisers, it is said, engaged in a cover-up of his deteriorating mental condition, which was dramatically and publicly exposed during the debate. In this version of events, Biden’s inner circle knew the president was non compos mentis and hid this fact from the American public.

In fact, it was stranger–and in a way, more troubling–than that. A cover-up, as we’ve understood the term to mean since Watergate, involves deliberately hiding something you know to be true. Biden’s closest advisers, however, were operating in a fog of delusion and denial; they refused to believe what they could see with their own eyes. Despite the president’s obvious cognitive decline, they had convinced themselves that he was fine. Their failure to recognize, up close, what everyone else could see from afar—that Biden was too feeble to run for reelection at the age of 82—led to a political disaster. And a relatively unproven national candidate, his vice president, was thrown into the race at the eleventh-hour against an emboldened Donald Trump. Biden had stepped aside on July 21—eight days after the GOP nominee had survived an assassination attempt.

Anyone who’s ever had to persuade an octogenarian grandfather to give up the car keys knew that it was time for the president to step aside. (Seventy-seven percent of Americans and 69 percent of Democrats opposed Biden running for a second term. A goodly share didn’t want Trump either.) But in the summer of 2024, Joe Biden was having none of it. And neither were many of his family, friends, and advisers. Despite months of public opinion polling that showed Biden potentially losing to Trump in critical battleground states, they were all-in on his bid for reelection.

Their reasons were both understandable–and delusional. Biden’s naysayers, some of his advisers reasoned, had been wrong in 2020 when they’d pronounced him politically dead after he placed fourth in the Iowa caucuses and fifth in the New Hampshire primary. Biden had gone on to win the nomination and beat Trump in the general election by seven million votes. Come 2024, Bidenworld believed the doubters were wrong again.

…

Over Saint Patrick’s Day weekend 2024, at a small White House party, Biden spoke to guests using a teleprompter. Daley (who, on a dozen visits to the White House, was never invited to drop in on Biden) couldn’t believe it. If the president needed a script for a small gathering of Irish guys, how would he survive the rigors of a campaign? “How are they letting this thing go on?” he thought. “This is crazy.”

Daley ran into his friend Tom Donilon, a long-time national security expert and brother of Biden’s adviser Mike. Why hadn’t anyone spoken to the president about stepping aside and giving someone else a chance to beat Trump? “How are they letting this fucking thing go on?” Daley asked him. Donilon shook his head. “I don’t believe there’s anyone who’s had the conversation with him about not running, including my brother,” he said. If Mike Donilon, Biden’s alter ego, hadn’t spoken to the president about his age, it was almost certain that no one had.

Nor did Democrats dare talk about Biden’s age—at least in public. “Everyone ignored it,” said Daley. Challenging the incumbent president could be a political death wish. “Every politician, every big shot, they all bought into the attitude that if you run against him and he gets softened up and loses to Trump, you’ll be blamed and your career is over. Every freaking one of them had no balls.”

The depth of denial among Biden’s advisers became clear when they challenged Trump to an early debate, in June. For a campaign covering up for a doddering uncle, this would have been a crazy risk to take. Why would Biden’s handlers, knowing that he’d lost his verbal fastball, send him out to pitch against Trump? They could have held out for a later debate in the fall, effectively running out the clock. (If Biden then fell on his face, it would be too late to replace him as the nominee.) The answer is that Biden’s top aides—campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, Donilon, and senior adviser Anita Dunn—must have believed, erroneously, that he could go toe-to-toe with Trump.

When Daley heard that Biden’s aides were considering a June debate, he was aghast. It was pure hubris. “They were so cocky,” he said. “They got CNN, they got the moderators, they got the rules—no audience. They were telling[people]: ‘We got everything we wanted.’” Daley foresaw disaster. He called up Biden’s chief of staff, Jeff Zients. “Jeff, I know you’re debating whether to debate,” he told him. “Do not do this. I’m telling you, don’t do it. I’m just telling you, come up with something, but do not do it.”

On Friday, June 21, 2024, Joe Biden arrived at Camp David to prepare for the debate. Just six days away, it might well decide the outcome of the 2024 election.

The president’s wobbly state should have been a flashing warning light. At his first meeting with Biden, Ron Klain, his former White House chief of staff, who was in charge of debate prep, was startled. He’d never seen Biden so exhausted and out of it. He seemed unaware of what was happening in his own campaign. The president appeared obsessed with foreign policy and uninterested in his second-term plans. During one prep session in Aspen Lodge, the presidential cabin, Biden suddenly got up, walked out to the pool, collapsed on a lounge chair, and fell sound asleep. Yet his advisers were undaunted. With unintended irony, one of them explained their strategy to me: “An early debate would quiet fears that the president was infirm.”

Again….woof.

Well, this should be an interesting comment thread.