Should Biden Resign?

New York Times columnist Bret Stephens has come out and said it. He recommended that Joe Biden put everyone out of their misery and announce that he is not going to run for a second term.

Under normal circumstances, the brain damaged president would not need to say it. It is obvious to everyone that he cannot even do the job now. That Biden’s principal flack keeps saying that he will run again is fooling no one.

In truth, Stephens is using rhetorical misdirection. Were it not for the fact of Kamala Harris, Democrats would be whispering that Biden should resign. To imagine that we are saddled with Joe Biden for three more years because identity politics gave the vice presidency to a clown is a tough pill to swallow. Democrats are in serious trouble-- but they brought it on themselves.

Or better, they would be mumbling about invoking the 25th Amendment. Remember during the Trump administration that the people who are currently howling about overturning elections were doing everything in their power to overturn the 2016 election. 

Beyond impeachment and calls for burning down the White House, leftist defenders of the sanctity of elections were calling for the president's cabinet to evoke the 25th amendment. By now everyone knows that Biden is disabled, incapable of doing the job. Shouldn't his cabinet take charge and remove him from office?

What scares Democrats is that even without the 25th amendment, Biden might not make it to the end of one term. If the Democrats are facing a sitting president Kamala Harris in 2024 they are royally fucked. And they all know it.

Of course, this assumes that the Republican Party provides a viable alternative and shows itself capable of governing. If it wins Congress in 2022, it will have a chance. But, don't hold your breath.

People in the know, especially people with a medical background, have long understood that Biden was suffering from senile dementia. As Michael Burry, a physician who gained fame in a book called The Big Short, said, dementia advances rapidly. It is not a slow process. 

Just as bad, though no one, with your humble blogger excepted, has pointed it out, is that Biden has almost surely had cosmetic surgery. Perhaps, for reasons that defy reasons, we are more nonplussed by females who have had work done-- you would have trouble finding very many women of a certain age who have not had their faces done-- but seeing the contorted, almost expressionless face of Joe Biden, gives one a creepy sensation. It would be bad enough if Biden were simply incoherent; delivering his lines from behind what appears to be a mask takes us beyond creepy, into the subhuman.

Anyway, even Stephens raises the issue of Biden’s health, but especially of his obvious cognitive impairment:

Yet it’s now considered horrible manners to raise concerns about Biden’s age and health. As if doing so can only play into Trump’s hands. As if the president’s well-being is nobody’s business but his own. As if it doesn’t much matter whether he has the fortitude for the world’s most important job, so long as his aides can adroitly fill the gaps. As if accusations of ageism and a giant shushing sound from media elites can keep the issue off the public mind.

True enough, the media does not dare raise the issue, but truthfully, as long as Biden is forced to appear in public, it is impossible to hide the hideous featureless face and the constant stream of incoherent babbling.

So, Stephens, who fancies himself center right, breaks the taboo:

It won’t do. From some of his public appearances, Biden seems … uneven. Often cogent, but sometimes alarmingly incoherent. What’s the reason? I have no idea. Do his appearances (including the good ones) inspire strong confidence that the president can go the distance in his current term, to say nothing of the next? No.

Note well-- the issue becomes whether Biden can finish his current term. It’s a good thing that Stephens raised the issue.

He also raises the simple fact, evident to everyone, that Biden is doing a lousy job. His presidency has been a rolling calamity:

Things might be different if the Biden presidency were off to a great start. It’s not. Blame Joe Manchin or Mitch McConnell or the antivaxxers, but Biden’s poll numbers have been deeply underwater since August. The man who once gave his party hope now weighs on his party’s fortunes like a pair of cement shoes.

We have no reason to believe that it’s going to get better any time soon, Keep in mind what Michael Burry said-- senile dementia advances rapidly.

Things might also be different if it looked like the administration would soon turn the corner. That’s the administration’s hope for the mammoth Build Back Better legislation. But last month’s passage of the infrastructure bill didn’t really move the political needle for Biden, and that bill was genuinely popular. Now B.B.B. looms as another costly progressive distraction in a time of surging prices, spiking homicides, resurgent disease, urban decay, a border crisis, a supply-chain crisis and the threat of Iran crossing the nuclear threshold and of Russia crossing the Ukrainian border.

Of course, the Biden agenda has been overwhelmed by facts on the ground. Stephens summarizes them well in the last sentence above. The media cannot spin inflation; it cannot spin rising crime; it cannot spin a resurgent virus, a border crisis or a supply chain crisis. Even the most bigoted and brain dead commentators are having trouble obfuscating reality.

Besides, the longer Biden waits the more likely it is that the Democratic Party will find itself saddled with Miss Giggles, Kamala Harris herself:

If she winds up as her party’s default nominee if Biden pulls out late, Democrats will have every reason to panic.

Stephens seems to be speaking to Biden himself when he suggests that Biden’s calamitous presidency will benefit if he becomes a lame duck. In truth, no one really believes that such a stark admission of failure will advance much of anything, but given Biden’s cognitive incapacities, it’s worth a try:

And what would that mean for the rest of the Biden presidency? Far from weakening him, it would instantly allow him to be statesmanlike. And it would be liberating. It would put an end to the endless media speculation. It would inject enthusiasm and interest into a listless Democratic Party. It would let him devote himself wholly to addressing the country’s immediate problems without worrying about re-election.

To be more clear than we need to be, there is absolutely no chance that Biden is going to run again in 2024. His flacks keep saying so because they do not want to tell him how badly he is doing his job. By now, everyone knows that he has failed miserably and that it is not going to get any better.