Joe Biden still can’t get over the 2024 election. His inner circle constantly showers him with unearned adoration, so I can see how this could happen, but it’s just sad. He wrote a book, but the tour won’t be normal because he’s still fighting prostate cancer. There’s going to be a lot of ‘me’ in this book, which will largely be ignored because anyone with cognitive function, which Joe Biden lacks, knows he would’ve been creamed in the general election.
Reports said the deep-blue Northern Virginia suburbs were abandoning him, along with every top Democrat, which spurred his exit in July 2024. His absence due to a COVID infection also didn’t help the age-and-health narrative that was now all-consuming after he imploded on CNN in that election-killing debate against Donald Trump.
The man still thinks he was the best person to beat Trump. It’s still a silly argument: Kamala Harris got taken to the woodshed, while Joe would’ve suffered a Walter Mondale-like drubbing. Either way, Democrats lose the popular vote, the Electoral College, and all seven swing states. For Democrats, this was a question of how they would like to lose, badly or really badly.
On his age and health, the failed president tries to argue that he was robust and strong. Wrong — we all saw the real Joe Biden. The vivacious, sharp-as-a-tack narrative was obliterated behind the scenes. And Joe, no one ran against you because that’s just bad party politics. No one is going to challenge a sitting president, and every time that’s happened, the party occupying the White House has suffered disaster. This is elementary school stuff, Joe.
‘No one challenged me because I was so strong.’ According to whom? Your family and inner staff don’t count. From what we know, your own staff knew you were off from day one.
Biden later revealed what really punched him in the gut as his party pleaded with him to drop out, from Pelosi, Obama, and Schumer to Sen. Patty Murray's letter (D-WA). The latter drove home the notion that he might not survive the chorus of cries for him to step aside. Pelosi was the point of the lance, outmaneuvering and outright working the Biden White House political team, which she reportedly wasn’t impressed by. The two haven’t spoken in months, though they’re supposedly planning a trip to the Vatican (via CNN):
“The difference in 2024 was not that I had a bad debate. Lots of presidents had bad debates. The difference was that every other president was given the chance to redeem themselves in a second debate. As it turned out, that chance would not be available to me,” the former president writes in “Promise Me, America,” according to the text of a chapter obtained by CNN.
[…]
“The widely held assumption that I wasn’t following what was happening could not have been more at odds with reality. I followed it. Hell, I was living it. I knew exactly how many Democratic members of Congress and governors had pulled their support of me. I did phone calls with sitting members of Congress where no one held back,” Biden writes. “I wasn’t living in a dream world. Here’s where I was living: I had won the Democratic nomination for president. And I had won it decisively. I had a real record of achievement as president. I had a vision for the future that I thought was right for the nation.
“I believed I was the best person to lead the world. Was I old? Yes. Was I able to do the job? Yes. Were voters angry about inflation? Yes. Were they angry about immigration? Yes. All tough problems. But not insurmountable ones.”
[…]
Biden argues, “the press and pundits kept talking about how weak I was. But every purportedly serious candidate decided not to run against me because I was too strong. The primaries sent no warning signs that I was in trouble. But that couldn’t derail the narrative setting in on my candidacy. That I was too old. That I was declining mentally.”
Biden directly rebuts those who say that assessment was proven by his interview with special prosecutor Robert Hur, whose report in February 2024, including multiple comments about the president’s faulty memory, dropped like a bombshell. The interview, Biden notes, was conducted in the days immediately following the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
[…]
[Relating to the 2024 debate] “While I knew I was having a terrible night, I thought Trump’s defiantly untruthful answers about his responsibility for January 6, and his refusal to say he would accept the results of the upcoming election, were disqualifying,” he writes.
Jill Biden, when she was promoting her memoir, said in a television interview that she thought her husband might have been having a stroke. Biden doesn’t address that in his book, but he writes that as they left the debate venue together, she asked “How do you feel?”
“Well, I screwed that up.’ Except my language was harsher,” he writes of his response.
But with all the uproar that followed, Biden writes he remained torn about what to do. A final straw for him was learning that Washington Sen. Patty Murray was going to release a letter signed by many Democratic senators calling on him to drop out, going public with what they had told Biden aides in a private meeting several days earlier.
[…]
Biden doesn’t directly address Obama’s involvement before he dropped out. But he notes that Obama was widely criticized by Democrats after his lackluster first debate in 2012 with Mitt Romney, that year’s Republican nominee. He also says his subsequent vice presidential debate performance proved important since “Barack had a terrible first debate against Mitt Romney. We needed to stop the bleeding. Which I did. Barack called me that night before I took off on Air Force Two to say, ‘Thanks, you saved me.’”
Biden does write about Sen. Chuck Schumer, writing that when the Senate Democratic leader came to see him at his Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, home in mid-July to suggest he drop out, “I told Schumer he had a lot of gumption (I may have said it differently at the time), coming to my home and telling me to get out of the race. Loyalty matters to me.”
The arrogance of this man is what I can’t stand: you caused all those problems, man. You were too slow and too stupid to be president. And we know you value loyalty. It’s the only currency in this business, but your inner circle fed you information that rivaled North Korean state media. Your agenda sucked, your White House sucked, and no one misses you.
The arguments against you could scale K2, Joe.
You had a vision — good for you, old man. It was roundly rejected in 2024.
Editor's Note: Do you enjoy Townhall's conservative reporting that takes on the radical Left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.
Join Townhall VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.
Join the Conversation
VIP members get the ability to comment on articles.