Will June Be Biden’s Only Debate?
Will June Be Biden’s Only Debate?
A Bad Debate Performance Gives Democrats the Out They Are Looking For
In a regular presidential year, it would be very very odd that a candidate debate would occur before either of the parties have officially nominated their candidates for the November election.
So why is the first one in June and why did, of all people, President Joe Biden demand it?
The hive-mind DC pundits are saying Trump will have a problem without an audience and the CNN moderators will grind and parse his – and only his - every statement: advantage Biden.
Donald Trump being Donald Trump agreed, even knowing he is playing on Biden’s home field by Biden’s rules because he is nothing if not confident, even though the closer the debate is to any of his on-going courtroom appearances is another perceived plus for Biden.
Everything, it seems, sets up for Biden.
Except one thing: if it goes poorly for Biden it could very well be his only debate.
The June debate will be about two months before the Democratic Party convention in Chicago and that’s why, whether or not Biden knows it, certain handlers have set the debate so early.
Because it is very very possible that Biden will collapse or wander off stage or ask about the moderators’ dead relatives or slur his words or talk about how he freed Nelson Mandela from jail while he was single handedly desegregating, oh, maybe, say France this time.
In other words, anything that has happened since he took office could possibly happen again and if it’s bad enough it could be a dream come true for the Democrats.
For then the party will have an obvious and incontrovertible and spinnably non-political reason to replace him as the nominee and then they will have two months to figure who gets the top spot on the ticket.
In other words, if Biden goes Biden in public in June he becomes eminently replaceable in August.
Like a terrible casting choice in a Broadway play, Biden can be dumped between the Boston preview run and the New York premiere.
If Biden does manage to make it through the debate, though, the Democrats will, short of a sudden physical ailment, be Gorilla Glue stuck with him as he and whatever personally loyal supporters and his wife will dig in their heels and say “see – he’s fine and the public has seen it so stop talking about getting rid of him.”
It is also quite possible that Trump is thinking along the same blurry slurry lines but coming to a radically different conclusion: Biden will Biden and the public will see it so he won’t be able to beat me in November so the debate will be great for me…as long as I remember to let him keep talking and talking and gaffing and gaffing.
But has the Trump team has considered the replacement possibility, has it considered that maybe certain Democrats who have seen Biden’s horrible poll numbers against Trump are setting him up to fail and flail and fall?
And, according to the line of thinking that has dominated Democrat brains for the past three years and four months, if Biden is replaced, it seems that most of the potential choices have a better chance against Trump than he does.
Because she can’t be completely ignored Vice President Kamala Harris, the oleaginous California Gov. Gavin Newsom, for some unknown reason Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, the reportedly nasty piece of work Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Oprah or Michelle (so well-known they don’t need last names) or any number of others could be seen as a viable replacement option for Democrats.
And if the transition is handled with just a modicum of delicacy it could actually be a boost to Democrats across the board – people like people who at least appear to be nice to senile people.
A change at the top does not rule out a possible victory for Trump, but it does make it more difficult.
The economy is bad, the border is mess, the budget is a vapor trail of zeroes under water, Israel/Hamas, Ukraine, censorship is ramping up even further – all of these are drags on the Biden campaign and would still be a problem for a replacement candidate.
But what wouldn’t be a problem for the replacement is the very queasy and overpowering feeling, actually certainty, that voters have that their president is not at all all there.
Take that out of the equation and the Democrats chance of holding on to the White House increases – significantly.
And that’s why a June debate – this time – is not very odd at all.
You and my friend Hugh Hewitt, among others, are making similar points - that the party elders will engineer a Biden withdrawal before the convention if he fails his "trial run" debate on June 27th. They must figure out how to deal with their worst-case scenario, a Kamala Harris ascension, who still polls very well among Democrats, including the convention delegates.