Writes Franklin Foer in The Atlantic, in "How Biden Destroyed His Legacy/The president’s accomplishments are considerable, but on his signature issue of preserving democracy, he failed spectacularly."
Let me answer those questions (as I'm sure you can answer them): Democrats wanted 4 more years of a mentally deficient presidential figurehead for their power. They just desperately changed their plan when we the people got too good of a sudden, scary glimpse at what they'd been up to.
But Foer says: "A cabal intent on preserving its own power would never have blundered in such tragically self-defeating fashion." And: "Democrats ignored a cascade of warning signs...." Is Foer writing to give them cover?
What do you think? Why didn’t Democrats stage an intervention earlier?
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87 comments:
The word "Democrats" is doing a lot of work in that discussion. There are tens of millions of people who consider themselves Democrats, and are registered as such. They voted to have FJB as their Presidential candidate, not once but twice. But they were not the people who persuaded him to drop out. That was a rather different group, also referred to as "Democrats".
Where is the option for a cabal of bumblers?
I want to vote for both options. If you watch their actions since the election is there any reason to think they’re anything but a cabal of bumblers?
embrace The Power.. of the word "AND"
The lock-step hivemind loyalist D-left sure do like to insist the following:
"The president’s accomplishments are considerable"
Accomplishments??? What? Like what?
• -Massive wasteful government spending that forced inflation thru the roof?
• -Massive illegal entrants allowed in? (while the left lied about it)
• -Massive amounts of our tax dollars used to fund these illegals - while ordinary Americans - still reeling from the Chi-Com/D virus - are ignored and forgotten?
• -Wars that might not have occurred under anyone else?
• -Massive crime in every direction - all while the FBI and the Media/dems lied to us. Told us "our lying eyes!"
• George Soros – who paid for our broken criminal justice system – given a Biden/Soviet Democrat award?
I think the only accomplishment Biden made-> for the loyalist base/hate-filled delusional MSNBC watching left- Biden was not Trump.
Poll sez: No Mercy
the DNC's options in 2020 were:
a) go with their people's choice.. Bernie Sanders, and LOSE the election
b) go with an empty suit.. PRETEND that is
...i) a human
..ii) that it WON'T enact the EXACT SAME policies as Bernie would
.iii) its OBVIOUS corruption and depravity is ALL JUST russian disinformation
even with these choices, the DNC's ONLY chance was to have the Chinese release a deadly pandemic that would "justify" a Complete scrapping of anti voter fraud rules
Both can be true
The left is always and everywhere indifferent to perverse consequences, be it in economics, society or politics. Direct action is the only action possible.
has something to do with women and households.
An aging, mentally-compromised, lazy cabal thought they were clever, and that they could fool a slim majority. Fool themselves they did.
"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." -- Abraham Lincoln
You can't fool all the people all of the time, but if you can do it just once, it lasts for four years. - Roger Price
Why would anyone assume competence in members of a cabal? If the White House has Muzak in the offices, it's been stuck on Yakety Sax for the last four years.
'We have to do bad things to prevent worse things from the other side.'
Our two-party system at a glance.
A confederacy of DuNCes.
Given the magnitude of the lies the cabal got away with (and the associated magnitude of the rewards of money and power) I believe they had every right to believe there was enough lucidity to wring out of Joe and enough covering by the media to make it to November. (Hell, Ann was defending his competence and criticizing 25th Amendment advocates long after sotu...)
In short, they miscalculated...
Biden said he was going to be a ‘bridge’ to new ‘generation of leaders’. Hubris kept him too long in the presidential race and he will be remembered chiefly for being a bridge back to Trump. A close second would be Biden’s mental decline.
A cabal of bumblers
Out of the 2 choices, I voted cabal.
However, this snippet/headline "How Biden Destroyed His Legacy/The president’s accomplishments are considerable, but on his signature issue of preserving democracy, he failed spectacularly"" pisses me off. Democracy was/is fine. The voters had choices for President, and the voters chose the R candidate. D voters are just upset their D candidate did not win.
Democracy worked.
The argument assumes the Trump presidency will be a bad one. If it is successful, future historians might say God bless Joe Biden for holding on for so long because that led to the second golden Trump era.
Nice, Captain SlingBlade. That wins the thread. Simple and elegant.
Bumblers. I think that there was an expectation that he wouldn't run again, and that Harris would step up, hence the whole "Biden-Harris Admin" stuff at the beginning. It became clear that Harris wasn't up to the task, and Biden decided to hang on, encouraged by his own staff who knew that their fates were tied to his. The problem is that the people around him weren't up to the task of managing the admin with only a figurehead.
Where is the option for Dr. Jill as a Machiavellian puppet master ...
I guess that qualifies as "cabal", but it's not as spicy.
Robert Conquest — 'The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.'
Bumbling idiots who don’t care at all, I mean, at all, for the well-being of 330 million people, as long as they could continue to feed at the trough of govt.
Started out as a cabal and ended up a bumble. Dems are too arrogant and vain to ever imagine that their "brilliant" ideas could go sideways in a split second. I'm figuring there were about two years in when they turned it over to the interns to manage.
This is the correct answer
A corrupt cabal of coryphei
Explain this, Franklin Foer.
The bumbles lost their teeth
A cabal of kópros, a bumble of bowel movement.
Nobody was thinking very far ahead. While there are certainly strategists and idealogues playing "The Long Game" (i.e., Soros funding far-left AG's, the open borders policy), when it comes to staying in power, it's whatever works best this week. Hence Joe Biden is suddenly the guy in 2020, Joe Biden is sharp as a tack, Joe Biden must go, Kamala Harris is our brilliant and joyful nominee...
When you don't have to back up or even believe what you are telling people, you don't think always think things through. Hell, you'll come up with something new when you need to.
The party top brass in Washington (Pelosi, Schumer, Harris,, senators, house members, cabinet members) pretended he was just fine and their media lapdogs played along (Looking at you, Joe Scarborough). This was 100% a cover-up. The people could tell based on the limited public events but Democrat pols didn't want to be seen as agreeing with Republicans, so they said it was all a conspiracy theory.
After the debate, these folks couldn't hide it from their donors anymore, or at least, couldn't hide it from the public. Not that they haven't tried, but they had no credibility on the issue. Once an organized (by Obama) campaign of big donors wanted Joe out, they had no choice go in that direction. That's who's really in charge of their party.
Biden's handlers at last agreed after Trump was shot. They wanted an open primary, but Biden's account later tweeted that Kamala was the heir and they had no choice (for DEI reasons) to keep her at the top of the ticket.
“mentally deficient presidential figurehead”
Althouse has an especially bad case of Biden derangement syndrome.
I would say that Biden made three mistakes:
1. Agreeing to a June debate rather than the traditional first debate in September, and not scheduling a followup debate a few weeks after the first one.
2. Not holding more press conference and campaign appearances to allow voters to get used to his aging. While he might still have ended up bowing out, he wouldn’t have been betting his reelection on a single debate performance.
3. Not telling Nancy Pelosi that he wasn’t going to drop out and if she did what she threatened she would guaranteed a Trump victory.
Joe Biden destroyed his legacy long ago. He is the worst President in US history.
A cabumble.
"What do you think? Why didn’t Democrats stage an intervention earlier? "
As you can see from what seems like an eternity of comments from Left Bank, LLR-democratical Rich, P-Inga, Field Marshall Freder, Dumb Lefty Mark, gadfly, victoria of pasadena et al, New Soviet Democraticals do what they are told and parrot whatever words are placed in their mouths by their "betters".
It has always been thus and shall always be.
It is a cabal. It isn't bumbling. They simply are too arrogant to believe there was anything someone might catch them doing.
Just like we are seeing today with Biden announcing on X that the Equal Rights Amendment is not ratified and the law of the land. Does anyone believe Biden posted that message? No. Biden might be deranged enough to believe an amendment that failed to pass in 1982 is all of a sudden added to the US Constitution by his decree, but someone should have told him before announcing it to the public. They didn't because they believe they can do it. They believe that once it is announced, then it will take lawsuits to cancel it.
What if the cabal didn’t blunder? I’m minded of the number of times Althouse herself offered her opinion that replacing Biden with anyone other than Harris would tear the Democrats apart, and then there’s the reality that — like Hillary Clinton before her — the more the voting public sees of Harris the less they like her. What if the key movers and shakers within the Democrats (definitely including their oligarchs like Soros) decided that their optimal strategy was to leave Biden in place as long as possible, then replace him with Harris with about 3 or 4 months, that being the limit of how long as they could leave her in front of the voters before those voters realize she’s an empty pantsuit? That seems pretty plausible to me.
continuing the counterfactual... had Biden not decided to run again, who would have likely won the nomination? And would that person have had a chance to do better? Giving Kamala more time wouldn't have helped to be sure. Newsome? Their whole current bench of appointed heirs likely couldn't have done much better. The Ds really need outsider candidates who could shake things up, but the aged Powers in charge have made such impossible.
It was definitely a cabal. Did they make mistakes? Sure. Anything that resulted in a loss suggests mistakes had to have been made. In some senses they painted themselves into a corner by choosing Biden which resulted in Harris (as VP and then as candidate.) Still, there was always a chance their machinations would still result in a win. They had many arrows in their quiver.
1. Hide the decline
2. Hide Harris' deficiencies
Both might be accomplished with a willing media, but new media was more potent than they thought.)
3. Trumped up felonies, and sexual assaults for Trump
4. Assassination
5. Cheating at the ballot box
The fact that they failed in the face of an active opponent is not a reflection of bumbling. Always, one side wins one loses. That does not make the loser incompetent. These tactics against someone other than Trump (say Romney, or somesuch would have been wildly successful.)
Indeed, there should be a Both button. But if only one must be selected I'd say cabals are the normal state of higher politics. Its the degree of bumbling that stands out here. How did they think they could get away with this?????
LeFt bank still thinks Biden was competent to lead, or else does not care if he is just a meat puppet for whoever is running the show.
I would say that Biden made three mistakes:
1. Agreeing to a June debate rather than the traditional first debate in September, and not scheduling a followup debate a few weeks after the first one.
A later debate would not have helped. They knew he was cooked. a later debate would have prevented them from even a chance at an alternative candidate. Unless you think Biden would have won despite his frailties...
2. Not holding more press conference and campaign appearances to allow voters to get used to his aging. While he might still have ended up bowing out, he wouldn’t have been betting his reelection on a single debate performance.
a. they held off the press conferences the first time because they needed to hide his frailties, and then only won through cheating. They probably felt they could do it again the second time. More exposure would have made it worse. They tried to pass the debate off as a one-off. Try doing that with 30 press conferences. If he COULD have fended off softball press conferences, that is what they would have done immediately after the debate to prove it was a fluke. Couldn't do that. Wake up LBotC
"Why didn’t Democrats stage an intervention earlier? Why didn’t his aides stop him from running?"
Each of those assumes a lack of agency on the part of Biden and assigns "Democrats" and "aides" an authority they never had.
Biden ran because Biden wanted to.
I guess it was the threat of RFKjr that led the DNC to rig the primaries and keep FJB in the game so long. BO and Pelosi didn't realize their pot of warm water was heating up until Butler. It may have helped us avoid President Newsom, so we should thank them, but their party faithful should be livid. They need a more appealing bench, but safe seats make that difficult.
Why didn't the media tell the truth about Biden? Bumblers or Cabal?
The best way for the Democrats to spend this is that Biden didn't know what he was doing and the rest of the democratic power base didn't have the heart to get rid of him before it was too late.
Exactly. Jill would almost certainly have to have been the principal culprit here. Given her proximity to her husband, she was in a position to overrule and block any staff members who had doubts about the President's mental status.
Cabal, yes, but blocked by the former babysitter-2nd wife-enabler. The cabal knew Joe Biden was damaged goods to far-gone to trot out into public even with teleprompters, drug cocktails, detailed note cards, and three staffers assigned as body-people to guide him from Point A to Point B. He still got lost on the podium, still spewed nonsense, still spoke of conversations with dead people. But decision not to run for 2nd term was controlled by Biden family, by Dr Jill and Hunter, not Obama, not Pelosi, not Schumer and his lot.
Dr Jill is ultimate decider on all things "Joe Biden"; she demanded her 2nd Biden term, regardless whether Joe was coherent, or whether Democrats saw Joe as the Parkinson/dementia patient he is. And Dr Jill ultimately got a payoff to allow "Joe Biden" to concede 2nd term, though at penalty of Kamala anointed as unelected replacement-candidate, ensuring a likely loss anyways. Dr Jill will be in Palm Springs shortly; Joe left in a skilled nursing facility lock-down ward in Delaware, Hunter back on a bender.
As the saying goes, revenge is a meal best served cold. The Obamas blatantly disrespected and openly disdained both Bidens, during Barack's two terms as president, and Barack's one term as shadow-president. Anyone remember Obama attending a Biden White House event, cold-shouldering Joe on-camera for us to see? Well, revenge is sweet; Dr Jill managed to cold-cock the Obamas, damage the Democratic Party, and destroy Kamala's political future, all the while parading around in red pantsuits since election day.
this is just the typical post-defeat wailing and finger pointing you get from Liberal/leftists after every loss. The focus is always on process and personalities. Its never the product, just the marketing strategy that failed to sell the product.
Biden looked like a sure winner, then the Democrat Elite panicked after the debate, and they went to Harris. Personally, I was shocked that Biden didn't resign in Jan or March 2024 and turn the reins over to Harris. I thought that was the plan all along. I didn't realize the D's are such robots that the Establishment could say "We're skipping primaries this year" and all the Democrat rubes and robots would say "Yes, master".
Thank God the Democrat Elite is what it is - Evil but arrogant.
The DNC wanted a passive aggressive figurehead to bray their handmade tales. A senior deficient with empathetic appeal, who wouldn't qualify for prosecution. The alternative was to dip into the DEI bucket and draw a joker, a Walz 'N Kamala.
If you go back to 2020, the Democrat Establishment seems to have been genuinelly (sic) split between who to run. Biden, the old war horse, Harris the golden girl from California, or someone else. Biden somehow staggered through the debates and the early primaries. Harris was so obnoxious even the D's didn't like her. And when the no one stood out, the DNC passed the word after Biden's victory, and it was Joe.
But Harris was then made VP, which made me think she had been their pick all along. And given Biden's age, I assumed if elected he would only go for one term, and turn it over to Harris so she could run as POTUS Harris in November 2024. Somehow, the elite got so comfortable with figurehead Biden, pliable tool, they just decided to run him again.
But i must say, the timing of the 1st debate was suspicious.
Biden's Victory = BIden's victory after SC
The DNC cleared the deck for Biden's renomination. They were all in on him running again until they weren't. You can argue that some sort of 3-D chess was going on to engineer getting Harris into the top slot without having to run in a primary but that seems far-fetched given they could have just as easily cleared the deck for her, which is why in the other thread I said how and who selected Harris as the replacement is the great as yet untold story.
Poor Jill Biden. One day, you're the hidden President, the next you're just a Doctor. Hopefully, she'll go back to brain surgery.
A Confederacy of Dunces
https://www.amazon.com/Confederacy-Dunces-John-Kennedy-Toole/dp/0802130208
at the time the Democrat conventional wisdom was that Kamala was a worse choice, and 300 million campaign dollars were in Joe (and Kamala's) name.
The Swamp is cunning & ruthless. But they aren’t omniscient & omnipotent. They believed Kamala is a Morton who wouldn’t win an election so they stuck with the Weekend at Bernie’s Strategy with Sleepy Joe. But after the Bennies stopped working well enough and Joe exposed the Ruse, then Dems needed to cut their losses on the presidency and try and keep the Senate and retake the House. Jill was pissed and puppeteers Joe into undermining the Dems. Jill is cunning & ruthless too. .
Biden would have entered the pantheon of history by doing this one simple thing: He should have resigned after two years in office.
1. He would forever have been a US president.
2. He would have been responsible for the first female president to hold the office.
3. If Harris turned out to have some revealed ability at leadership, she would have been nominated and won this last election.
4. If Harris showed no leadership ability, the Democrats would have had plenty of time to nominate someone else, who could have won.
5. Win or lose, Biden couldn't have been blamed. As it is, it's totally on him--he left the Democrats holding the bag.
I have asked several strongly pro-Democratic friends about this and they uniformly claim that they did not in any way realize until the debate that Biden was declining. They are just regular people, not part of any machine or the swamp in any way. Whereas, many conservatives felt that they could see that he was declining -- and had declined below an acceptable level -- for months if not years prior to the debate. This leads me to consider that the reason Democrats did not push a resignation earlier is because, like my friends, they just didn't see it. I know this seems improbable but it's not impossible.
I think you are largely correct. The Cabal (mostly Obama's minions) thought they could drag Joe's old, decayed carcass over the finish line one more time. They totally misinterpreted 2022, as well as thinking they could stage-manage the anti-Trump lawfare to get him the nomination before burying him in court during the campaign. Then Biden shat the bed at the debate and it was a mad scramble.
I still think Buchanan was worse. But Biden and Carter are numbers 2 and 3, in some order.
The cabal miscalculated. They thought Joe was just alert enough and Trump just hated enough. With Joe as figurehead for prog policies, they saw no political reason to change. The cabal also knew Kamala and feared her weakness more than Joe's. None of it irrational, but still mistaken.
"didn't have the heart....". Awwwww, how touching. Now explain why they should be forgiven for letting him put his signature on legislation and EOs he din't understand.
Agreed. Biden was an idiot at birth. How this moronic fucking asshole became a senator is a mystery. How he continued to win reelection is also a mystery. The only explanation is that the powers behind the curtain in Delaware wanted the biggest idiot possible as a puppet senator. Obama picked him because he was a white moron that would make the master shine. But for that, Biden never had a chance at later becoming President.
It is sickening that Biden is going to get away with the most blatant example of influence peddling. The media and Democrats constantly turned a blind eye to Biden’s crimes.
It is sickening that Biden is going to get away with the most blatant example of influence peddling. The media and Democrats constantly turned a blind eye to Biden’s crimes.
Thank GOD she lost. SHE is ignorant. WHEN did the 28th amendment get ratified?? By whom?? We know why he has no clue. What is HER excuse??
President Biden
@POTUS
·
Follow
Today I'm affirming what I have long believed and what three-fourths of the states have ratified:
The 28th Amendment is the law of the land, guaranteeing all Americans equal rights and protections under the law regardless of their sex.
Vice President Kamala Harris
@VP
The Equal Rights Amendment is the 28th Amendment, and it is the law of the land.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The Archivist of the United States, charged with officially publishing ratified amendments, has confirmed that the ERA was not ratified and based that analysis on binding legal precedent.
There is no 28th Amendment.
archives.gov/press/press-re…
Scott Jennings
@ScottJenningsKY
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Looking forward to President Trump citing “the Biden rule” when he begins unilaterally changing the Constitution via social media posts. Biden truly is the gift that keeps on giving.
Not holding more press conference and campaign appearances to allow voters to get used to his aging.
There's a reason they/he didn't hold more press conferences and campaign appearances. See if you can figure out what it is.
I agree…partially. They thought Joe could win. They didn’t think he could serve another full term, so the plan was - after a reasonable time - to convince him to resign and elevate Kamala. Thus easing her path to retain the presidency.
Wait! Althouse forgot to add "BLAME tRumP!!!!" as option, because, as Fredo, Rob Kook, and (D)Inga have consistently educated us, everything is Trump's fault.
Nope. Biden made one mistake: Getting old and senile. He was clearly not capable of public performances without being doped to the eyeballs, literally. The bumbling Democrat cabal cared only about retaining power, and were prepared to act as Edgar Bergen to Biden's Charlie McCarthy. That is Biden's legacy.
They didn't see it because they didn't WANT to see it.
I'll be honest, in 2020, I thought Biden would be unelectable with all of the creepy pictures and videos out there. We all saw them. I would bet that none of your strongly pro-Democratic friends (or mine, I have a few) have any idea even now that those pictures and videos existed. The Republicans should have been running ads with them 24/7 and we might not have had the disasters of the past four years.
Why I see a cabal that couldn't think straight. But you get that when you are forced to settle for a kakistocracy in the dark. The Dims chose--badly.
On response to Mr. Foer I offer the Imperial Japanese government for a cabal that picked "Doom" as it's choice.
Because too many people forget that cabals are made up of humans and prone to all of their frailties, and are not evil super-geniuses with precise complicated plans that always go like fine Swiss clockwork.
This cabal consisting of Obama, Pelosi and Schumer is undermining our faith in the supreme craftiness of cabals so key to conspiracy theory. Let that be Biden's legacy.
A Murder of Clowns
It's not Althouse who's displaying derangement here.
Biden was not fit for the presidency in 2021and unscripted press conferences would have made that evident from the git go. Mentally he was never fit for the presidency but when younger he had the energy to bullshit and bluster his way though with a complaisant press corps to carry his water when he was younger.
How about as wanna-be puppet master?
And my opinion for a few years is that there was no center and that every faction was riding it's own hobby horse as hard as they could with no coordination or cooperation with the other factions.
OK, if the 28th Amendment is good to go, then I propose Trump reinstate Bills of Attainder. Senator Schiff from California would be the first to have something to worry about. I think there may be well enough deserving people in the Deep State that their best hope is writer's cramp on Trump's part.
Just because they believe they can do it does not mean they are not idiots.
Wishing doesn't make it so.
Copilot: "A cabal is a small group of people who work together secretly to achieve a particular goal, often one that is political or conspiratorial in nature."
It was a Cabal of Bumblers.
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