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How Joe Biden Got His Revenge on the Democratic Party

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  November 08, 2024 11:00 PM

A part of me wonders if Joe Biden was more cogent than he let on in public. It’s not exactly like that classic SNL skit with Phil Hartman, who played an aloof Ronald Reagan in front of the cameras but a commanding political force behind the scenes around the time Iran-Contra was in the news. For sure, he’s lost more than a step, but this seems to be a tale of the ultimate political revenge. 

As they whine on social media about their blowout loss to Donald Trump, Democrats are also preparing to shank one another over who shoulders most of the blame for the 2024 election loss. Biden and Harris’ camps are at each other’s throats, the media is trying to torch everyone, and this civil war could be epically entertaining. The first chapter is the revenge of Joe Biden, who got pushed out of the race in July, only to nuke the Democrats’ plans for a mini-primary. He wasn’t supposed to endorse Kamala so soon. He did so anyway (via NYT): 

Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, suggested this week that it would have been better for the Democratic Party if President Biden had abandoned his re-election campaign sooner and the party had then held a competitive primary process to replace him. 

In an interview on Thursday with The New York Times, Ms. Pelosi said what was widely reported around the time Mr. Biden dropped out: that she believed it was implicitly understood that his exit would be followed by an internal party competition for a new nominee, instead of an anointment of Vice President Kamala Harris. 

“Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Ms. Pelosi said during an interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro, a host of “The Interview,” a Times podcast. She added during the interview, which will be published in full on Saturday, “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary.” 

Ms. Pelosi went on: “And as I say, Kamala may have, I think she would have done well in that and been stronger going forward. But we don’t know that. That didn’t happen. We live with what happened. And because the president endorsed Kamala Harris immediately, that really made it almost impossible to have a primary at that time. If it had been much earlier, it would have been different.” 

[…] 

Mr. Biden endorsed Ms. Harris within an hour after he ended his campaign in July, a decision he made only after an intense pressure campaign from Democrats that Ms. Pelosi quietly led. His support for the vice president, along with backing from many other Democrats, choked off any avenue for a challenger to emerge. Over two weeks, Ms. Harris swiftly gathered support from delegates to the Democratic National Convention. 

After the convention, Biden seemed to go out of his way to declare that Kamala Harris was part of every major failed policy decision in the Biden administration, rendering her incapable of untethering herself from this failed agenda. She also didn’t have the intelligence to do so. 

Is it insane to suggest that Biden adopted a ‘if I can’t win, no other Democrat can’ mentality? It sure seems that way, and in keeping with the Delaware liberal’s cantankerous attitude.

“You screwed me; therefore, I screw you” – Joe Biden, 2024.

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