After years of adulation and fawning by the Left over Joe Biden despite his hideously corrupt and incompetent presidency, the Left and its minions, accomplices, stooges, and apparatchiks have suddenly done a complete 180-degree turn and now are vilifying him at every opportunity. The reason? The Left realizes that Biden has no chance of defeating Donald Trump in November. Additionally, the Left strongly suspects that a new Trump presidency will be an Extinction Level Event for the Deep State (which Trump has promised to “obliterate”— his precise term, not mine).
Meanwhile, Biden so far is resolutely refusing to voluntarily withdraw his candidacy for president. He possesses all the Democratic Convention delegates he needs to ensure his nomination.
So where do we go from here?
If Biden stands fast and there are no successful countermeasures implemented by Democratic Party movers and shakers, he wins the nomination. For this situation to end with a different result, one of two things has to occur. Either Biden changes his mind and voluntarily decides to withdraw his candidacy or, despite holding fast, he is forced out (and essentially has no choice in the matter).
Let’s start with the “forced out” scenario. One of the Left’s favorite countermeasures is the strategic leak. This was used a while ago when there was a strategic leak of a draft of a Supreme Court opinion overruling Roe v. Wade. In Biden’s case, as a hypothetical, there might be a leak of a medical report stating that he has Parkinson’s disease with dementia and is likely to become a blithering idiot (more so than he is already) unable to say his name or recognize his wife, all by the middle of 2025. In the face of such a report, it might be expected that even Biden’s most fanatical supporters would have to admit that his quest for a nomination must at all costs come to an end.
The problems with this scenario, though, are that (1) no such medical report may exist and (2) there may not be any more damaging information about Biden that is materially worse than that which already has come out and is known. We’ve seen Biden falling down airplane stairs, blurting out “We beat Medicare”, etc. How much more materially worse information can there be out there that could be leaked and create a universal outcry for Biden to withdraw?
Continuing with the “forced out” scenario, there is the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution. The 25th Amendment was drafted primarily to deal with a comatose president. It operates in a far more convoluted fashion if a president happens to be conscious.
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Section 4 of the 25th Amendment provides that if the Vice President and a majority of the cabinet transmit to the Speaker of the House and the president pro tem of the Senate “their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.” (Underscoring added by me).
Observe that Vice President Harris would have to turn traitor on Joe Biden for this to work. If she declines to do so, the use of the 25th Amendment to oust Biden stops dead in its tracks.
But this is by no means the end of the story. Under the 25th Amendment, the President is reinstated if he transmits a written declaration to the aforementioned individuals that no such disability exists. At that point, the Vice President and a majority of the cabinet have four days in which to transmit yet another written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.
This counter-declaration by the Vice President and a majority of the cabinet brings Congress into the act. Congress is required to assemble within 48 hours (if not already in session) after the receipt of that declaration to decide the issue. If Congress is in session at the time such declaration arrives, each house of Congress must within a 21-day period determine by a two-thirds vote that the President is unable to discharge his powers and duties. If Congress is not in session at the time such declaration arrives, the 21-day period does not commence until the 48 hours to assemble has expired (essentially, the 21 day period becomes a 23-day period — not a major difference).
After you digest these complex rules, consider this: there is no deadline for the President to transmit his written declaration. This makes eminent sense because one can easily imagine a situation in which a president is disabled and then recovers weeks or months later. If Biden is removed on, say, July 24, he could wait until the day before the commencement of the Democratic National Convention to submit his written declaration. The Democratic National Convention would likely be in a state of consternation even if such a declaration were not filed by Biden before the Convention, but if it were filed the consternation and uncertainty would rise exponentially. The Democratic National Convention would end up looking like a hungry pack of wolves fighting over a single lamb shank.
Even if Biden is successfully removed under the 25th Amendment, there is nothing in the 25th Amendment that precludes him from running for president again in November. Perhaps most important of all, removing Biden if he does not want to be removed would require two-thirds of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to vote in favor of his removal — an event which would appear to be most unlikely to occur, assuming Republicans would prefer Trump to run against Biden rather than someone else.
It also appears that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives can exercise what is in effect a “pocket veto” by simply declining to act within the 21-day period. Biden would be reinstated as president if the House back-burners the matter and doesn’t act within the 21 days.
For these reasons, the 25th Amendment would appear to be more of a trap for the Democratic Party than a remedy against an obstinate Joe Biden. However, the thing to watch for is a situation in which 25th Amendment proceedings are commenced against Joe Biden, and somehow that event is relied upon as a justification for all Convention delegates (now mostly pledged to Biden) to be released from their pledge and to gain the right vote for whomever they choose. Still, Kamala Harris would need to be a participant in the scheme, and it would seem she is unlikely to do so unless she can be guaranteed the nomination for president. Additionally, the House Republicans could sow chaos in the Democratic National Convention by taking a quick vote just before the Convention begins or while it is in progress in which more than one-third of the House votes against removing Biden.
The bottom-line conclusion appears to be that the Left’s only hope of removing Biden as a candidate is if the Left can persuade him to voluntarily withdraw his name from nomination. If he holds fast, he will end up as the Democratic Party’s candidate for president notwithstanding his obvious and serious infirmities.
In his brilliant new book “The End of Everything,” Victor Davis Hanson discusses four instances in history in which the loser in a major war was not just defeated but was totally annihilated: Thebes, Carthage, Constantinople, and Tenochtitlan (the Aztec capital destroyed by Cortes). In these instances, those destined to be defeated showed great courage in vowing to fight to the end, no matter what, and at the same time had a deep reservoir of hope, which can be characterized as “danger’s comforter.” It ends up proving to be a lethal combination. The fierce resistance further angers the attackers, who end up vowing to make their ultimate victory not just a victory but an annihilation. The reservoir of hope precludes the defeated from surrendering until it is too late to do so.
One wonders if something along these lines applies to Joe Biden. Certainly, he won’t be annihilated if he gains the nomination and ends up losing to Donald Trump, so in that sense the analogy is not exact. But if he indeed does have a “fight to the end” mentality coupled with a reservoir of (unreasonable) hope, it’s easy to imagine him fighting the Democratic Party’s elites, obtaining the nomination, losing the election, and going down in the history books as the Left’s next Ralph Nader — utterly reviled because he cost the Left the election.
