Joe Biden is a genius.
OK, he's actually a doddering old fool who can't remember his own name half the time, but we know he has moments of lucidity here and there. We also know that he wanted a second term and his fellow Democrats pushed him to the side. Why he would be shocked that the party that uses "old white men" as a pejorative wouldn't really be behind an old white man is beyond me, yet he apparently was.
From the moment he stepped aside, though, Biden seemed bound and determined to scuttle Kamala Harris's nomination.
Sure, it may have been gaffe after gaffe – or, such as when he said Harris had been intimately involved in economic discussions just as she was trying to distance herself from Biden's economic policies, he might have actually thought it would help – but over a month ago, I commented how it looked just like he was trying to sabotage her.
I'm not saying that Biden is actively trying to sabotage Harris's campaign without looking like he was.
— Tom Knighton (@TheTomKnighton) October 30, 2024
I'm just saying I can't think of that much he'd do differently if he were actively trying to sabotage her campaign without looking like he was.
Plus, despite everyone calling Trump "literally Hitler," what did Biden do immediately after the election? Have Trump come on over and have a nice sit-down chat with him, something you don't do with someone who is considered the most evil man to ever live reincarnated.
Then we have the Hunter Biden pardon.
You've heard all about it by now. You know what was said, what Biden's "reasoning" was, and how he'd repeatedly claimed that he would do no such thing, only to turn out that he lied yet again.
But in that same moment, he set a precedent that President-elect Donald Trump can now use as he wants. The problem was that the prosecution was political? That can be said about pretty much every January 6 defendant. Trump could pardon them all, and over a broad period to make sure they couldn't be prosecuted for anything else later on.
Others have been prosecuted because of their affiliation with Trump. Steve Bannon, for example, or Roger Stone. While Bannon has done his time and it was only a misdemeanor, it would send a signal how he's running things. Trump held off in pardoning Stone last go-around because it would be a political liability, but that's not as true today as it was in 2020.
Honestly, from the moment when he left the campaign trail, Joe Biden has done so much that has benefitted Trump that it's hard for me not to look at some of it and wonder if he was really just trying to hurt the Democrats.
I wouldn't be surprised if he did. He'd been a good Democrat for decades, working his way up the food chain and finally making it to the top, only to have his party turn on him. If that were me, and I were actually lucid enough of the time, I'd probably think about ways to get back at them without being too obvious.
Of course, that all assumes there's enough of Biden left to actually be that calculating. I can't rule out that his handlers are resentful of being ousted with the old goat, so it might be them working through Biden, but that feels a little too tin-foil hat for me.
Then again, the difference between "established fact" and "conspiracy theory" seems to be about six weeks, so anything's possible.