While President Joe Biden’s staff polishes up his speech to the Democratic National Convention for Monday night, leading Democrats are now openly acknowledging that it was an actual coup that took him out of the running.
Maureen Dowd, writer and a leading voice for Democrats, admitted it in her column in the New York Times over the weekend:
“We head to Chicago on a wave of euphoria, exuberance, exultation, excitement and even, you might say, ecstasy,” she wrote. “It’s going to be a glorious coronation — except that everyone’s mad at one another.”
She goes on to reveal that the top Democrats are “bristling with resentments even as they are about to try to put on a united front at the United Center in the Windy City.”
Why? Because “A coterie of powerful Democrats maneuvered behind the scenes to push an incumbent president out of the race.”
Dowd, whose column appears behind the newspaper paywall, says it became obvious Biden was not going to be able to campaign, much less serve competently for another our years.
This is something that was obvious to conservatives for years, even before 2020.
“But at some point, when the polls cratered, Democratic mandarins decided to put the welfare of the party — and the country — ahead of the president’s ego, and stop catering to his self-regarding fantasy that he was the only one who could beat Donald Trump. Also, they all could know that Biden was slowing faster than he and his family and his inner circle were acknowledging,” Dowd wrote.
In one weekend, Biden went from looking “forward to getting back on the campaign trail” to having suffered the political coup at the hands of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem Jeffries.
“And when Kamala Harris deftly cemented her position as the nominee, the party erupted in a dizzying sense of possibility,” Dowd wrote, fawningly.
“How could Biden not be hurt that the Democratic convention went from four days of ‘sitting shiva,’ as James Carville put it, to a joyful romp with Kamala atop the ticket?” Dowd asked. “Democrat after Democrat who had been close to Biden before conspiring to push him out had to confess to cable anchors that they had not been able to talk to the president, who was sulking in his tent.”
Dowd then acknowledged that the Democrats were whitewashing the coup by effusively praising Biden.
James Clyburn told news shows that Biden’s record is one “that no president of the United States could ever match.”
Nancy Pelosi proposed on CBS that Biden’s face should be carved onto Mount Rushmore.
“You have Teddy Roosevelt up there,” Pelosi said. “And he’s wonderful. I don’t say take him down. But you could add Biden.”
On Monday night, Biden will attempt to bring unity to the party that just conducted a coup against him. As he has so many times before, he will read the lines on the teleprompter. And pause meaningfully. His speech will be slurred and garbled. He’ll take his hero’s applause, and he’ll depart the stage before he becomes too befuddled to continue the charade.
In the end, it may become obvious to even the most ardent Biden devotee that he was unable to continue, and that the political coup was the only way forward.
