Biden’s Purgatory

Biden’s Purgatory

The Unraveling of a Presidential Campaign

“I’m not in this for my legacy; I’m running to complete the job I started.” 

Biden at his July 10th Press Conference

“The lawlessness of the Biden Administration — at the border, in staffing considerations, and in routine defiance of court rulings — makes clear that the current president and his administration not only possesses the means, but perhaps also the intent, to circumvent constitutional limits and disregard the will of the voters should they demand a new president.” 

 Heritage Foundation Report on Project, July 10th.

OK Joe, here’s the deal: Nobody is evaluating your campaign on your legacy or even your foreign policy accomplishments. Those triumphs are now mired in the back “pages” of the mainstream media, of those who are even focusing on these "elements. Oh sure, if there’s still a hot war in Gaza come days, those younger voters you lost will simply stay away from the polls… or vote for diluting third party candidates.

The world is dramatically focused on the clear and convincing evidence of your deteriorating physical and mental condition… so, even those word mix-ups that people just glossed over in the past, with a little humor, are now interpreted as evidence of mental deterioration. Calling “Trump” your vice-president and saying “Putin” when you meant “Zelensky” were noted everywhere. That you refused to take a full cognitive neurological panel, added to your own party’s questioning whether you have been candid in revealing the full results of the medical tests you have taken, is now widely regarded as “definitive proof” of mental unraveling. Too late to try that test now. No one would trust it. Even the leaders of your closest foreign allies are concerned.

Sadly, the numbers that still haunt your campaign have not improved. That you cannot surge ahead of a convicted felon who is running on “retribution,” autocracy, isolationism, using the military and DOJ as personal tools to accomplish replacement of your alleged “deep state” with his own democracy-crushing “deep state,” should tell you a lot. With donors of contributions of $90 million holding back that money, dozens of House members (all running for reelection) and a few Senators telling you to step down or risk massive down-ballot losses that might give MAGA the House and Senate, key labor leaders defecting and even your stalwarts – like leader of the Black Caucus, Jim Clyburn, and former Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, saying you can certain change your mind (not exactly a resounding endorsement) – this is hardly just a hint.

With your approval polls at an abysmal 37%, Trump’s trending better polling numbers (look at pre-debate and results as of July 9th) just looking at the top ten polls in the nation, analyzed against recent elections, there does not seem to be a clear path to your victory in November. Sure, it’s possible, but it is no longer probable. And if your goal is to “complete the job” you started, you just might be enabling a new administration hell-bent on reversing what you have accomplished instead. Simply put, that these conversations continue, with no real focus on future plans, this discussion has not and is highly unlikely to dissipate, telling you that trying to earn back lost credibility is apparently irreversible.

Trump is now moderating his tone a tad to capture undecided independents and even angry Democrats. MAGA Republicans are having a field day, believing that they are sitting on the verge of a November landslide; like everyone else, they don’t think you can do the job going forward, even Trump is now drooling at the prospect of “Trump vs Biden.” That quote from Heritage above, mirroring the “bloodbath” threats Trump made should he lose the election, is intended to give voters yet another reason not to vote for Biden in November. Trump has “wink-wink” distanced himself from Project 2025, a 900-page tome written by Trump’s closest ex-White House insiders tracking his every rally pledge.

Trumpers are even less subtle than ever, smelling a victory that will move the United States, at a minimum, into the world of illiberal “democracy” a la Trump’s paradigm: Victor Orban’s Hungary, a nation built around one strongman… with no permitted opposition. Trump is even open about favoring his big business cronies, a huge change from 2016.

“Central to Trump’s 2016 pitch was that politicians on both sides of the aisle had been captured by wealthy donors and corporate lobbyists. ‘Big business, elite media, and major donors are lining up behind the campaign of my opponent because they know she will keep our rigged system in place,’ he declared at his speech accepting the Republican presidential nomination. But he, Trump, would be different.

“Today, Trump is back at the helm of the Republican Party, but the anti-corporate rhetoric has disappeared. This time around, the former president isn’t even pretending to stand up to corporate power: He’s defending big business, cozying up to billionaires, and wooing CEOs. And instead of paying an electoral price for this reversal, the polls suggest that he’s winning over more voters—specifically, more working-class voters—than ever before. Trump’s first victory opened the door to an economically populist version of the GOP. His second could very well close it.” The Atlantic, July 10th.

Indeed, elected MAGAns are feeling the “whoa,” as they contemplate what a white Christian nationalist America would look like with Trump at the helm. By way of example, take this July 10th House floor speech Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI), dubbed as almost lifted from “The Handmaid’s Tale,” by Anna Conkling writing for the July 11th The Daily Beast: “[Grothman] accused ‘the angry feminist movement’ of emasculating men and said the U.S. should ‘work our way back’ to 1960 if former President Donald Trump wins in November…

“Grothman went after supporters of government-funded childcare programs and said President Lyndon Johnson ’s War on Poverty ‘took the purpose out of the man’s life, because now you have a basket of goodies for the mom.’ He added, ‘They’ve taken away the purpose of the man to be part of a family. And if we want to get America back to, say, 1960, where this was almost unheard of, we have to fundamentally change these programs.’…Grothman said ‘the breakdown of the family’ was caused by the U.S. government in the 1960s and ‘people like Angela Davis, well-known communist, people like the feminists who were so important in the 1960s… So I hope the press corps picks up on this, and I hope Republican and Democrat leadership put together some sort of plan for January, in which we work our way back to where America was in the 1960s.’…

“Grothman, a fervent supporter of Trump, hailed the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022 , saying after the decision: “Over the years, millions of children have had their dreams stolen before seeing the light of the day. But today marks a brighter future for the hearts and minds of unborn children, women, and families… ‘I commend the six justices who voted to overturn Roe for having the courage to base their decision on sound legal principles rather than a fashionable line of thinking that rules academia, Hollywood, and the mainstream media.’” Grothman, who sounds a lot like all those post-Roe repeal old-man legislatures criminalizing abortion, is clearly calendar impaired (the Make America Grate movement). But for Joe Biden, it is obviously little more than tilting at windmills to believe that there is anything he can do to regain his necessary Democratic trust.

I’m Peter Dekom, and Joe is rushing toward the defining moment of his legacy: the presidential candidate who eroded the last firm barrier to a Trump autocratic America.