Biden Goes Northam
Virginia's former Democratic Governor proves you can survive not just one but two scandals and loud, powerful calls for your resignation. Joe Biden took notes.
The coolest part of writing here on Substack isn’t necessarily racking up a massive number of paid subscribers (that would be nice) but the interactions that my posts generate with my relatively small (but growing!) and very smart and accomplished subscribers.
I’m serious about that last point. Many friends and former colleagues from my days in business, government, and politics are among my subscribers, as are a few other accomplished individuals, including historians, think-tank scholars, and a former US ambassador. Many often respond via email with questions, comments, retorts, and the occasional disagreement or alternative view. I love ‘em all. My last post on how we’re “Stuck with Joe” on the ballot is a good example. A few friends questioned my conclusion. Fair enough.
Given the Chornobyl-style meltdown among Democratic talking heads concerning Joe Biden’s debate performance from June 27th (more than a week ago), some believe Joe is finished. Reports of leading Democrats, from Virginia’s Senior US Senator and Intelligence Committee chair Mark Warner to at least four incumbent US House members (Lloyd Doggett, D-TX, Jared Golden, D-ME, Seth Moulson, D-MA, and Mike Quigley, D-IL), suggest there is a movement afoot to pressure Biden to vacate his certain nomination for another term as President. That remains to be seen. No one is running to the White House to demand Biden’s resignation thus far. They seem to be pointing fingers at who should go. Such courage!
Then, the question is, as we posited this past week, what next? The options are this:
Joe resigns the presidency, citing his declining health. Kamala Harris becomes President and the defacto nominee with the benefit of incumbency. Kamala picks a nominee for Vice President that I predict will be Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), an ideological soulmate from a swing state. She ain’t putting a white male on her ticket, especially a so-called “moderate.” She wants a progressive “girl power” ticket for November - another demographic first - since Trump is likely to pick a white male as his running mate. It’s all about checking the DEI boxes.
Joe announces, ala Lyndon Johnson, after the New Hampshire primary (which he barely won) in 1964, that he will not accept his party’s nomination. Johnson eventually endorsed his Vice President (Hubert Humphery) to succeed him as the party’s nominee. Some say that’s the worst of all outcomes and the one he may most likely choose. This is Joe Biden, after all, known for being wrong about every major foreign policy decision (and many more) over the past half-century, to paraphrase former Bush/Obama Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Joe says he’s not accepting the party’s nomination and opens the convention to a successor. It would be the first truly open party convention since 1952, when Democrats eventually chose Adlai Stevenson as their nominee against the GOP’s Dwight Eisenhower. Given her demographic (DEI) bona fides, Kamala Harris would begin as the front runner amidst the challenges their Chicago convention already promises. Once a diversity hire, always a diversity hire.
Joe says pound sand, he’s in the race, win or lose. Kamala will tag along as his running mate and Joe’s likely successor when his evident mental and physical decline accelerates in the months ahead. Meanwhile, as in option 2, she’s forced to defend Biden and his record and continue to cover up for his infirmities.
Based on Friday's events, Biden appears to have chosen option four, if only to buy time until the next relapse, including a defiant rally (during his preferred operating hours between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Please take note, Chairmen Xi, Vlad, and Kim, and keep any future invasions to Joe’s pre-sundown hours). It smacks of the Ralph Northam strategy. Meanwhile, the mainstream media and more than a few Democratic officials have been exposed for obviously covering up for Joe’s infirmities and incoherent lapses for much of his presidency, if not before.
Northam, a Democrat and soft-spoken if progressive pediatric neurologist, was elected Virginia Governor in November 2017 after serving four years as Lt. Gov. during the Terry McAuliffe administration. He defeated my friend and former RNC Chair Ed Gillespie, thanks mostly to votes from deep blue and government-rich northern Virginia, which comprised about a third of the state’s vote. It's too bad that Ed’s opposition research team didn’t find the photo before the election (major fail). Democrats have always been better at opposition research than Republicans.
Donald Trump has a point below. My gosh, the ad I could have written with just this yearbook page (“Which one are you, Ralph?”). I would have started a statewide ballot campaign (okay, a fundraiser) so people could vote—blown opportunity.
In February 2019, Northam’s 1984 medical school yearbook surfaced, with his page depicting him either in blackface or, more likely, adorned in a full KKK outfit, face covered by his white pointed hood (my money is on the latter). He had previously distinguished himself with a horrible if enthusiastic and controversial explanation about post-birth “abortion” in Virginia, made just days before his “blackface” scandal emerged.
Calls for Northam’s resignation rang loud and clear nationwide, including those from his predecessor, McAuliffe, and Joe Biden. A black Democratic Lt. Governor, Justin Fairfax, with his own sex scandal, waited in the wings as Lieutenant Governor (he badly lost his party’s nomination for governor in 2021). The Attorney General, Democrat Mark Herring, confessed to his own blackface past in college. Herring was defeated for reelection in 2021 by Jason Miyares, a possible GOP candidate for Governor in 2025.
Northam went into full apology mode and bent the knee to every race-based progressive in the state, eschewing calls for his resignation. He finished his term after giving the hard-left Democratic base whatever it wanted, including loosening election laws, restoring voting rights for violent felons as his predecessor infamously did, and signing measures to deregulate marijuana consumption for recreational purposes. He was succeeded by current GOP Governor Glenn Youngkin, who has stopped much of this nonsense.
No doubt Joe Biden and his political advisors, such as they are, took careful notes of Northam’s predicaments, even as he pandered for the black vote by calling for the ascension of the alleged sex assault, an issue Biden has familiarity with.
During Biden’s tape-delayed and probably heavily edited ABC interview with faux journalist and long-time Democratic party activist (hack) George Stephanolopous, he was careful to blame himself, not others, for his “bad night.” This is smart, but the interview format was wrong in inspiring confidence in even sensible Democratic voters. The interview failed.
But for Biden to truly resurrect and salvage his campaign after last week’s debate debacle, he must do more. Longtime Democratic progressive activist and now Fox News contributor Leslie Marshall has suggested that Biden conduct an hour or longer evening unscripted live town hall, taking questions from the audience without advance notice, teleprompters, or staff engagement.
I couldn’t agree more. Can you name any major party presidential candidate of the past 50 years who wasn’t capable of that? Should we expect no less of our presidential candidates? Where I come from, most candidates would salivate at such an opportunity.
To his credit, Northam went on a statewide apology and outreach tour, making himself available to every progressive collective in Virginia. Biden doesn’t have to do that, but demonstrating the debate was a fluke is a must if he is to survive the fall campaign, presuming he has no other relapses the media bothers to share with us.
Good luck with that. But it’s his only hope. The fundraising is already beginning to dry up, and voter enthusiasm for the Democrats will wither up and down the ballot. Trump may not only win in a landslide but eventually help down-ballot races that thus far continue to look pretty good for Democrats. More about that in a future post, but my fear is that, unlike the Reagan landslide of 1984, voters will split their tickets to keep a future Trump administration in check. Remember, Trump are Biden are both unpopular for different reasons.
Reagan won 538 electoral votes, losing only Minnesota, in 1984. Yet despite modest GOP gains in Congress, the House remained solidly Democratic. The Senate flipped back to the Democrats just two years later.
Meanwhile, we are in Idiocracy mode, determining whether our president can function. How far we have fallen. This is more evidence that Idiocracy wasn’t just a comedy but a prophetic docudrama.