Amazing how much damage people’s egos can do. Trump’s ego is incomprehensibly grandiose and deluded. But how about Biden’s? Tragically for America and the world, Biden’s ego is what set up the second presidency of the most destructive person in American politics. Biden’s ego was/is also grandiose and deluded. To this day he believes that he should have run for a second term and he would have won. Just delusional nonsense. From the New Yorker article by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson “How Joe Biden Handed the Presidency to Donald Trump”:
“The disconnect between Biden’s optimism and the unhappy reality of poll results was a constant throughout his Administration. Many insiders sensed that his inner circle shielded him from bad news. It’s also true that, for Biden to absorb those poll results, he would have had to face the biggest issue driving them: the public had concluded—long before most Democratic officials, media, and other “élites” had—that he was far too old to do the job.”
First things first – why did Joe Biden win the Democratic nomination in 2016? I postulate it was the 15% rule of primary elections. Come Super Tuesday 2016 it was time to vote in the Democratic Primary in California. My first choice was Buttigieg and my second choice was Bloomberg – two candidates who were not too far left, like Harris and Sanders and Warren who campaigned on Medicare for All, a sure loser in a nationwide election. But neither Buttigieg nor Bloomberg were close enough to clear the 15% bar – which means they would not pick up any California electoral votes. This was the same situation in all of the swing state primaries that Super Tuesday.That left only Biden who could get the 15% or more. So, I chose Biden. Because it was so existentially important to defeat Trump that I felt we could not nominate someone too far to the left.
And so did Democrats all across the nation on Super Tuesday. And, of course, James Clyburn of South Carolina endorsed Biden, probably for much the same reason, and Biden won the critical South Carolina vote as well.
Then, Biden won 81 million votes in the presidential election and became president. And I guess he thought “They love me!” No, Joe, they voted against the worst person in American political history.
Joe promised to be a transition president. He promised to serve one term and let the next generation compete in 2024. He reneged on that promise. Why? Ego. He accomplished real things in his presidency – ended the COVID19 pandemic, passed a massive infrastructure bill, passed the CHIPS act, rallied the democratic countries around the world to support Ukraine against the invasion of Russia. Thank you, Joe. But Joe’s ego decided that he was beloved, and indispensable, and sure to win in 2024.
But he couldn’t possibly win in 2024. His mental and physical capabilities had dramatically collapsed. And it was obvious, obvious, obvious to all who saw him in private, and so too when he mumbled and fumbled his way through his June 2024 debate catastrophe. I wrote the morning after the debate, June 28,2024:
“ Joe Biden will not be president in 2025. It’s over. An old, old man struggling to remember a bunch of stuff he had tried to memorize. Scared old man. I could watch only about ten minutes. It was excruciating.
I need to say the obvious - Biden was a good president but a terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible campaigner. There is too much at stake to be polite”.
But, still his ego said he could win. It took a lot to get him to withdraw from the race. And he is bitter about that even to this day, and he still thinks he would have won. Ego – delusional.
By the way, people saw Joe with his cognitive and physical and vitality deficiencies and said he was too old. No, he is only a year older than I, than many articulate and forceful people. No, Joe is suffering from dementia, maybe Parkinson’s? Aging is very individual. Joe’s issues are not from age, in my opinion. Sadly, I know more about dementia than I wish I knew.
So, instead of having Biden announce that he would not run after the start of 2024 and throw the nomination process open to the enormously talented Democratic political field, from Buttigieg and Pritzger and Shapiro and Harris and Booker and Whitmer and and and… he stayed in the race. Then, he CHOSE Harris. He at a minimum should have removed himself and opened the process to the Democratic Convention to decide their candidate. That way, elected Democrats and highly placed Democrats at the Convention would elect their nominee after convention campaigning, just like they used to do it back before the ‘70s. It would be one of the greatest TV spectacles of all time. It would have taken multiple votes. It would have produced a very talented Democratic candidate who would have had massive publicity. Then there would have been a much better contest for the presidency, and I am convinced that the Orange Menace would have lost, decisively.
But, none of this was to be. Why? Because of Joe Biden’s ego.
And now, we have the most grandiose, delusional ego in American history in the White House, with no concern for anything other than “What’s in it for me?”
Damn.
