Throughout the month of July, everything fell apart and then quickly came back together for the Democrats. Now that we’re months past the ratf-cking of Joe Biden, I have assembled a list of reports and beliefs of how everything went down: many Democrats were looking for a reason to push out a popular and effective Democratic president even before Biden’s poor debate performance; there was a feeding frenzy between a childish Beltway media and dozens of leaky Democrats post-debate; those people closest to Pres. Biden, like Chuck Schumer, tried to keep everything handled privately and within the Dem family; Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama’s public reticence to back Biden led to a revolt from donors; the Democratic coup plotters wanted a twofer, pushing out Biden AND passing over Kamala Harris as they publicly pipe-dreamed of an “open mini-primary” and a brokered convention.
After Pres. Biden dropped out and endorsed his VP, it took VP Harris less than 48 hours to secure the delegates for the Democratic nomination. She did so while raising tens of millions of dollars, a war chest which meant that she didn’t have to beg the donors who knifed Biden in the back for anything. VP Harris has spent the past three months building her own coalition using the electoral strategy of Biden’s 2020’s win (much to Pelosi’s chagrin) and putting her own spin on it. All of this is much to Nancy Pelosi’s dismay – Pelosi publicly took Biden out and tried to passover Kamala, because Pelosi has always hated that VP Harris never needed Pelosi’s machinery to win anything. Kamala has never kissed Pelosi’s ring AND Kamala and Joe out-maneuvered Pelosi. All of this will be a fertile political drama for historians. Unfortunately, Jonathan Alter is not that historian. Alter has written a new book called American Reckoning, and it looks like Pelosi is still pissed that she got outmaneuvered. Some highlights from the American Reckoning excerpt in Vanity Fair:
Alter got a heads-up that the Dems wanted to replace Biden: On Father’s Day, eleven days before the historic June 27 CNN debate, I spoke to a senior Democratic senator who told me that if Biden did poorly in the debate, Democrats would have to find another presidential nominee. Surprised by this, I immediately broke (again) my New Year’s resolution not to scheme against Biden.
Pelosi was left with the bloody knife: The key figure in getting Biden to change his mind was Pelosi, who drew on their forty-year friendship. At first, she thought Biden could survive what he described as his “bad night.” But Pelosi is an institutionalist; she loves the House, and her nightmare of not regaining control of that chamber (when Democrats were so close to winning it back) seemed to be coming true. With Republican control of the presidency, both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court, who would check Trump’s authoritarian impulses? After Biden under-performed with Stephanopoulos, Pelosi expected that Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and the Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill would stage an intervention. “But the men were MIA,” one insider told me. “She wasn’t happy that the only bloody fingerprints on the knife were hers.”
Biden did not consult the Clintons or Obamas: As Biden weighed this momentous political decision, he cut himself off for more than four days from almost everyone outside his family. The wounds of what he called “Obama’s deal with the Clintons” in 2016 were still surprisingly fresh, and he consulted none of them in this period—an extraordinary decision in itself. He would make this excruciating call without the wisdom of the fellow presidents he had once considered good friends.
Biden caught them off-guard: After finalizing his decision with aides Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti on Saturday, Biden got up Sunday, July 21, and began telling people, including Harris. Senior staff heard the news only moments before the world did. Pelosi found out when she was performing community service with Jon Bon Jovi in New Jersey; Obama was playing golf. Just one hour before withdrawing, Biden was on the phone with the president of Slovenia putting the finishing touches on the largest prisoner swap since the Cold War, more proof that he was still a global leader of great skill and compassion.
“Pelosi expected that Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and the Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill would stage an intervention. ‘But the men were MIA,’ one insider told me. ‘She wasn’t happy that the only bloody fingerprints on the knife were hers.’” The men weren’t MIA, they were just conducting their business in private, while Pelosi showed her whole ass on Morning Joe and briefed crap about Biden to every DC reporter for two weeks straight. While Pelosi was leading the public coup, Hakeem Jeffries was privately expressing his concerns to Biden’s people AND publicly supporting the president. Chuck Schumer went to visit Biden in Delaware for a one-on-one heart-to-heart, which we only learned after Biden’s withdrawal from the race.
The part which Pelosi and her people don’t want to say out loud is that their classlessness and public tantruming was a huge part of why Biden’s poll numbers were going down and why the donors backed away, then Pelosi cited those polls and donor nerves as evidence that Biden needed to step down. She orchestrated the chaos and then got mad when her coup blew up in her face and she was left holding the bloody knife.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.