Some of us haven’t yet finished wishing Barack Obama would just go away. A decade after leaving the Oval Office, the former president still hovers over our politics issuing sanctimonious tweets in support of dishonest causes, such as the Democrats’ botched gerrymander in Virginia.
But now, even with one ex-president still loitering with intent, there is another whose absence we constantly crave but are repeatedly denied. In this desire, we are certainly joined by most Democrats, for the ex-president in question is Joe Biden, whose already scant capacities dwindled into non-existence in 2024, a diminishment that led ineluctably to the blue party’s crushing electoral defeat at the hands of Donald Trump.
You’d think that after such a humiliating end to his hapless presidency, Biden would willingly fade into the gloaming in Delaware, avoiding attention as much as possible. But no, Obama’s one-time veep keeps drawing attention to himself, not so much by bouncing back into the public eye as by rolling across our vision like a thick incoming fog.
The latest instance of this politico-climatic phenomenon came in a TV interview for Sunday Morning given by his wife, Jill Biden. She told interviewer Rita Braver, who wasn’t, however, brave enough to challenge the former first lady’s implausible assertions, that she was frightened watching Joe’s debate performance against Trump two years ago because she had “never ever seen Joe like that before or since…never, no…I don’t know what happened. As I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh my God, he’s having a stroke!”
My Washington Examiner colleague, Jim Antle, noted laconically that Dr. Jill had finally made a diagnosis.
Will anyone believe her? Can they? We all saw Joe’s precipitous plunge into befuddlement. By saying, “all,” I particularly include Democrats who nevertheless tried to foist Biden on the country for a second term that would have ended when he was approaching 90.
They knew then, as they know now, that Biden is an embarrassment to the party. The last thing they want is for him and Jill to keep reminding the nation of how dishonest the Democratic Party is and how willingly it will seek to dupe the nation in the cause of continued power.
Another embarrassing lurker among Democrats is Kamala Harris, the veep who succeeded Biden at the top of the party ticket after he was forced out by its uber bosses, Obama and the octogenarian former speaker, Nancy Pelosi.
Harris didn’t even rise to the level of a faut de mieux candidate, for there were doubtless more talented Democrats around, but Joe had lumbered his party with her as an act of revenge for his brutal defenestration. They were stuck with her and don’t want to be stuck again.
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Nevertheless, she is probably running, and RealClearPolitics polling aggregation has her among the frontrunners. This is surely due entirely to name recognition; it is impossible to believe Democrats will pick her when they are actually given a choice and enough time to consider their options.
What the Democrats need is for the Harrises and the Obamas and the Bidens — the old, older, and oldest guards of the party — to just go away and allow a new leader of a suitable age to emerge. The problem is that this would leave the field open for a legion of cranks who now represent the radicalized party.