The shock-and-awe effect on Democrats continues this weekend, a full three days after the stunning display of advanced dementia shown by President Joe Biden during Thursday’s 90-minute debate with former President Donald Trump.
Democrats across the country are speaking out — some trying to defend Biden, others calling for his withdrawal from the race. Four major newspaper editorial boards, including the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Atlanta Constitution, and even the Philadelphia Inquirer have called for Biden to drop.
But not the Alaska Democratic Party or Democrat Rep. Mary Peltola. They’re saying nothing.
Democratic National Committee former Vice Chair R.T. Rybak wrote on Facebook that Democrats must push President Joe Biden to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race.
“Our elected officials are staying shockingly silent in public, especially considering how many of them acknowledge privately that this has to happen,” Rybak wrote.
Former U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, tried to brush off the debate’s effect on Americans: “Less than a third of likely voters watched debate. Very low numbers for first time a President and former President debated. People were expecting huge audience. Nope, smallest audience in 20 yrs. I imagine most of those who watched were hard core for one candidate or the other.”
She neglected to mention that because of social media, the audience was record-breaking, with 242 million views on X.
Democrat operative James Carville, whose nickname is “the ragin’ cajun,” was more blunt.
“I didn’t think he should run for re-election,” said the former Clinton campaign aide. “There’s nothing I saw last night that would dissuade me of that opinion at all. I still think what I thought. I can’t be any simpler. And I think I have a slightly unique perspective because l’m aged myself. And unlike most people, I have some vague idea of what that job entails. That’s not a — that’s for somebody a lot younger than that. And that applies to Trump, by the way. That was my view, that is my view, I hardly think my view is gonna change.”
Carville said the party has few options.
“I don’t know, because it’s never faced anything like this before. There’s no historical wisdom that we could bring to bear. A majority of delegates could do whatever they want. But what I think will be pretty persuasive will be a flood of polling that came in over the next week. There’s nothing that Washington pays more attention to than a poll. Nothing. Totally predictable. I mean, I got back to my hotel three minutes after the debate started and I’m like, well, ‘this is a two-gummy night.’ Then pretty soon the whole thing blows up: ‘Oh, well, you were right, huh.’ (I was hearing that) from 20 different people,” he said.
Peltola posted that she is pro-fish. The Democrats focused on the importance of food stamps.
Rep. Peltola has been in the White House 15 times in the past 15 months, and was with Biden during eight of those visits, including one time when she was one-on-one with him, according to White House visitor logs.
Peltola is on the record saying Biden is one of the “smartest, sharpest people” she has met in Washington, D.C. But now, she is not coming to his defense.
Peltola told Axios she is “not thinking about anybody’s race but my own.”
Alaska Democrats across the state have clammed up as well, whistling past the graveyard of the Biden Administration. They appear to be waiting for instructions from the national party to know what to say.
The instructions haven’t been given to Peltola or Democrats in Alaska because there is a civil war in the Democratic Party right now, a struggle they created for themselves in 2020 when they put Biden in as their nominee, even though his dementia was already evident, but concealable by clever candidate handling personnel.
Now they are paying the piper, having to decide if Biden’s successor Vice President Kamala Harris or some other candidate can be subbed in, and how to convince Biden and, importantly, First Lady Jill Biden, to let go of the White House.
