The 25th Now, Or Impeachment Later
This happened today, as Joe Biden was attempting to push his ruinous and idiotic climate change agenda…
The White House Walkback, which at this point is all but trademarked, was that Biden MEANT TO SAY he had skin cancer, which was treated in 2020.
Which is unmitigated poppycock. Even Joe Biden doesn’t think that his skin cancer, which he got from spending weekends counting his bribe money on Rehoboth Beach, came from oil slicks on the car windshield when he was growing up.
The thing is, bunk and nonsense have always been Joe Biden’s stock in trade. The difference is that he formerly could make them plausible. Now it’s just an embarrassing string of provable, poorly-told falsehoods which convince nobody and make the American people cringe.
Quinnipiac came out with their latest poll on Biden’s approval today, and the left-wing pollster has Biden at just 31 percent. He’s at a catastrophic 19 percent with Hispanics – 10 points below what the Q-poll has Biden with among white voters.
As I said Monday at The American Spectator, this is a presidency in free fall. Biden cannot appear in public if his handlers want to stop the bleeding. Putting him out there to tout radical, destructive and unpopular policies like his zany and unworkable climate-based aggressions on the American public while promising impossible things like free air conditioners for all of America’s poor actually does damage to the Left’s agenda – at this point the things Biden is touting, which are their things and not really his, make them Biden’s policies. And if Biden’s brand is poisonous those policies are thereby poisoned.
I commonly say the Democrats are a party run by and for people incapable of doing a proper job at honest work, and this is what I’m talking about. When your presidential asset is as diminished as Biden is, you cannot make him the front man for all of your most ambitious policy goals. Those goals then look stupid and insane, as Biden looks stupid and insane, and the persuadable and nonpolitical will then see them as the delusional rantings of a demented old man rather than the agenda of a capable political party.
They’ve missed this, because they’re so focused on trying to hold the Hard Left within the Democrat Party in order to minimize their losses in the midterms. Because if the Hard Left checks out, it could be utterly disastrous this fall. That’s how you lose not only Raphael Warnock and John Fetterman in the Senate but even potentially Maggie Hassan, Dick Blumenthal and Patty Murray.
So you’re sacrificing the long-term health of your political agenda for the short-term survival of your incumbents in what’s likely a disastrous cycle.
This is what happens when you’ve got a president who has the confidence of no one and the functional ability to match.
And it’s surprising, particularly after his performance on that trip to Israel and Saudi Arabia which really should have been the end of his presidency – or at least its appearances abroad – that his own party has not moved forward to address the white-hot fire in the room.
Strategically they’re making a huge mistake trying to hold on to Biden through the 2024 election. That can’t be done. His cognitive ability is shot and everyone knows it. Biden can’t make it two more years; he’ll be an abject mental vegetable by this summer and the whole country – worse, so do our enemies, but that’s not a particular concern of his party – knows.
At some point, they – and we – will have to turn to Kamala Harris. Which is Biden in a different package; Harris is all bunk and nonsense as well without the excuse of dementia, but at least the churn would indicate the Democrats care.
It might not be a palatable option, for certain. Every time Harris is put forward to represent the administration she shows why her party is so loath to turn the reins over to her. But if Biden commences to falling down everywhere, or if he has an unintelligible senior moment and melts down, or if his dementia manifests itself in unfortunate ways like committing visible violence against those around him, which can happen to loved ones of the senile, much less reporters or Secret Service agents of a senile president, there will come a moment when this can’t sustain.
Arguably we’re already there.
And this is where the midterms could be such a pivotal moment.
Because in January, when there are likely Republican majorities in both the House and Senate, the issue will not be a 25th Amendment removal of the president. By that point that will be a foregone conclusion, assuming Biden’s deterioration continues apace.
No, after the GOP majority takes power, the momentum will be for an impeachment. Because there will be investigations – real investigations – into Hunter Biden’s laptop and phone, and into Biden’s exploits in foreign commerce, and into all manner of inexplicable policy choices with have damaged the American people. Those investigations are likely to be damaging not just to Biden but to the Democrats as a whole.
And the negotiation ploy at that point will be to offer up the 25th Amendment and a removal of Biden for incapacity as a compromise choice.
The problem is that should Kevin McCarthy and/or Mitch McConnell be willing to push the envelope, they could well get Democrat votes for an impeachment.
What happens when the Hard Left blames Joe Biden for the Democrats’ midterm losses? Remember, they don’t love him. They might actually like Kamala Harris better, and certainly they might want Biden out of the way in advance of 2024 when they would plan to fully take over the Democrat Party. How many votes for removal in the Senate might that generate? And how willing is the Democrat establishment to endure the agony of the process?
This ascribes a level of aggression to the GOP that it has not shown; this I grant. However, as things get worse – economically, politically, culturally and otherwise – and as American morale continues to sink, things become possible which would not be in normal times.
If the Democrats were smart, they would be working to cut their losses and jettison Joe Biden now. Not doing so could well be a source of regret in less than a year’s time.
