For heaven’s sake, Joe, let it go

Everyone wants Joe Biden gone. Even the people who don’t want him gone really want him gone.

“Everyone’s waiting for Joe,” said a top Democrat. “And he’s sitting at home, stewing and saying, ‘What if? What if? What if?’ We’re doing things the Democratic way. We’re botching it.”

I have many happy memories of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. I went there growing up and have Proustian recollections of crispy french fries with vinegar sold on the boardwalk. But now my gladdening images have been replaced by a maddening one: the president hunkered down in his house there, recovering from COVID-19, resisting talking to anyone who will tell him the truth, hoarsely yelling, “Get off my beach!” at the growing list of Democratic lawmakers and donors trying to warn him that he is pulling down his party and the country.

Joe Biden is under intense pressure to withdraw from the presidential race.Credit: NYT

It makes me sad that Biden doesn’t see what’s inescapable: If he doesn’t walk away gracefully right now, he will probably go down as a pariah and ruin his legacy.

The race for the Oval Office is between two delusional, selfish, stubborn old guys, and that’s a depressing state of affairs.

As for those Washington, D.C. careerists surrounding Biden who a) hid his true condition; b) gaslighted the press for focusing on what they called a nonexistent age issue; c) shielded the president from the truth about his cratering chances of winning; and d) seem to have put their self-interest first? One way or the other, they’ll probably be out of their jobs soon.

Shockingly, even as the Republicans roar out of Milwaukee, vibrating with joy, Biden’s brain trust continues to run a lousy campaign, as if nothing has changed. Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, Biden’s campaign chair, went on Morning Joe on Friday to say that the polls aren’t as bad as they are; that Biden is “more committed than ever” to running; and that, when 100,000 homes got a knock on the door this past week, 76 per cent of the respondents “are with Joe Biden”. Then, as Alex Thompson reported for Axios, Dillon went from cable news to a rah-rah call telling staffers not to pay attention to cable news because “the people in our country are not watching cable news”.

On the same day, Vice President Kamala Harris suddenly joined a call to reassure donors, but donors are in full flight. At the convention, I went to a “Policy Fest” held by the Heritage Foundation – the folks devising the extreme Project 2025 – and their vision for America is very creepy and retrogressive.

Biden’s still bitter that Barack Obama pushed him aside for Hillary Clinton in 2015.Credit: AP

Democrats should be alarmed thinking about Donald Trump with a Republican Senate promoting Judge Aileen Cannon to the Supreme Court.

This is already over. Democrats and journalists have moved on to other questions: Will Biden throw his support to Harris or ask for an open convention? Would Harris agree to be on an all-femme ticket with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer? Can a candidate other than Harris play with the pot of gold now designated for Biden? Would the amazing ratings of a gladiatorial Democratic contest and an open convention drive Trump out of his mind? (Yes!)

Tony Fabrizio, a Trump pollster, told reporters last week that not only does the campaign have an ad blitz about Biden’s debate brain-freeze ready to go, but it also has primo oppo on Harris. “Rest assured,” he said, “we are 100 per cent ready.”

But Republicans are nervous about a Democrat ticket swap. Republican Senator Tom Cotton posted that it would be a “coup”.

Biden has a right to be sniffy about some of the elite Democrats who want him out. Even if former president Barack Obama stopped messing with his Netflix money and came to Delaware to tell Biden to go, Biden wouldn’t listen. He’s still bitter that Obama pushed him aside for Hillary Clinton in 2015, so he doesn’t want to hear from either of them. Obama always seems to be leading Biden off the stage — even at that glossy Hollywood fundraiser — and Biden resents it. He doesn’t want to have that awful feeling like he had in 2016 when he watched Trump beat Clinton, after he had stepped aside.

Now CNN reports that Biden is “seething” at his old friend, Nancy Pelosi, the most respected person in the party, because he thinks she’s co-ordinating a campaign to force him out. Pelosi’s long-time pal in the California delegation, Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, put out a letter on Friday urging Biden to step aside, and senators Martin Heinrich and Sherrod Brown (Democrat, Ohio), who are sure to bring others with them, also joined the chorus.

It’s true that Pelosi has played Madame Web in this crisis, initially trying to create a silky web that would caress Biden out of the race, and only getting tougher once he resisted. She has been sitting with her maps of the political world, working the phones and doing her head counts.

She loves Biden — he was more grateful for her help than Obama was and more effusive in his praise — but she loves the House more. She refuses to let the president burn it down for the sake of his ego and make it easy for Trump to slouch back to Washington with messianic, vengeful dreams.

Given that Biden said it would take the Lord Almighty to make him drop out, I have no doubt that Pelosi has been using their shared Catholic faith to guilt-trip the president into understanding the stakes and what she thinks the Lord Almighty would want. Certainly, she might have said, she doesn’t like Trump claiming, as he did this week, that the Lord Almighty is on his side.

Really, what the Democrats need is a thrilling open convention rather than a coronation. Trump just had one of those, after all.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.