Nearly every time President Joe Biden appears in public these days, he fuels the chatter: Will aging Joe bow out of the 2024 race? Will he be forced to step aside?
In the latest incident, former president Barack Obama was seen on Saturday reaching for Biden’s hand and seemingly guiding the 81-year-old Commander-in-Chief off the stage at a Los Angeles fundraiser.
And that came after Biden stood motionless and stared blankly for a full minute at a Juneteenth celebration at the White House on Monday, as others sang and danced around him. Eventually, Philonise Floyd, brother of the late George Floyd, noticed Biden’s concerning pause and wrapped his arm around him to help.
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates is denying that Biden froze in the viral video, calling it a ‘cheap fake memo’ being spewed by the media.
But it seems no matter how much cold water the Biden campaign or Democratic Party throw on this raging fire of speculation, Americans will not be put off the Great Joe Biden Replacement Theory.
It’s the idea that somehow, some way the President will be swapped out as the Democratic Party‘s candidate ahead of the 2024 election.
‘Dropping out would be a big risk. But there’s some threshold below which continuing to run is a bigger risk,’ polling guru Nate Silver wrote on social media last week. ‘Are we there yet? I don’t know. But it’s more than fair to ask.’
Last week, Biden stood motionless and stared blankly for nearly a full minute at a Juneteenth celebration at the White House, as people around him sang and danced to the music.
Silver, founder of the website FiveThirtyEight, noted that Biden’s average approval rating had reached a new low of 37.4 percent. And chief among voter concerns is Biden’s age, which Silver concluded to be, ‘an extremely understandable concern, [as] Biden looks/acts his age and is a huge outlier to ask for the job until 86 [years old].’
Atlantic columnist Mark Leibovich cruelly stamped the President ‘Ruth Bader Biden’ earlier this month.
That’s a reference to the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who once angered some liberals by refusing to retire during Barack Obama’s presidency and subsequently passed away during Donald Trump’s term, allowing the Republican president to nominate a conservative justice.
And James Carville, the political mastermind behind Bill Clinton’s presidential campaigns, said flat-out this month that Biden should not have run for re-election.
Now, a last-ditch effort by Biden’s backers to silence his critics inside the party may prove to be his ultimate undoing.
According to Democratic bigwig, Obama campaign guru David Axelrod, the Biden team scheduled one of the earliest presidential debates in history (June 27 on CNN) to prove to naysayers that Joe’s not going anywhere.
But the gambit carries tremendous risk.
While an efficient debate performance by Biden could help rally Democrats behind him – a significant misstep would only stoke more replacement chatter.
Former Clinton advisor and polling expert Mark Penn suggested the CNN debate will be Biden’s last chance to reassure voters he’s fit for the job.
On Saturday, video of former President Barack Obama reaching for Biden’s hand and seemingly guiding the 81-year-old Commander-in-Chief off the stage at a Los Angeles fundraiser went viral.
While an efficient debate performance by Biden could help rally Democrats behind him – a significant misstep would only stoke more replacement chatter. (Above) President Trump and Joe Biden during the first presidential debate in Cleveland, Ohio on September 29, 2020
‘They have deliberately thrown down the gauntlet for an early debate,’ Penn said, ‘and I think that’s gonna be the point at which Americans judge: is he ready for another term or not.’
Now DailyMail.com has learned that if Joe stumbles in that first face-off with Trump or if his polling numbers keep falling, it’ll take a united front of the liberal grandees to make Joe throw in the towel.
‘The only people who could force him out would be Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer,’ one Democratic strategist told DailyMail.com. ‘It would have to be the four of them collectively.’
And the process would be high risk.
One consultant theatrically described the difficulty level of replacing their candidate as similar to trying to turn that doomed container ship that careened into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore in May.
That sad story ended with a total collapse and six deaths.
But other party insiders concede that the candidate swap could work if everything was carefully planned and executed.
Political columnist Joe Klein theorized in a recent newsletter that if Biden were to stand down, ‘a vigorous young candidate — don’t ask me who — could win over the country with a single convention speech’ in August.’
In Klein’s scenario, the Democratic party savior would deliver an Obama-esque inspirational speech, akin to Barack’s famous 2004 Democratic Convention address, that would quickly bring together disaffected Democrats and moderate independents.
DailyMail.com has learned that if Joe stumbles in that first face-off with Trump or if his polling numbers keep falling, it’ll take a united front of the liberal grandees to make Joe throw in the towel.
One consultant theatrically described the difficulty level of replacing their candidate as similar to trying to turn that doomed container ship that careened into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore in May.
Plus, wrote Klein, the Democratic Party’s prodigious dislike of Trump would unite any disaffected factions behind a new nominee.
However, there’s another potential complication.
As the recognized leader of the Democratic Party, a stubborn Biden could refuse to step down and fight on to Election Day, even as the party grows more exasperated with his performance.
Biden is fiercely proud of his first-term accomplishments, which he – dubiously – boasts are more significant than other modern president’s triumphs. Though to be fair, Biden was the one who beat Trump in 2020.
Additionally, while Biden respects former House Speaker Pelosi, Bill Clinton, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, his growing resentment of Obama has become painfully clear.
The former president famously backed Hillary Clinton in 2016 over Biden in the Democratic primary and even reportedly tried to stop his vice president from running in 2020.
Ironically, both Barack and Michelle Obama appear to have intentionally kept their distance from the Biden White House – knowing that their public appearances trigger nostalgia for the days when voters liked their nominees.
Barack Obama made a brief appearance at the White House state dinner for the Kenyan president in late May and Michelle was nowhere in sight.
Mrs. Obama, who has no close personal feelings for the Bidens, according to one well-connected Democratic source, flat-out ignored the invitation.
That troubling incident at the Democratic fundraiser held at the Peacock Theater in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday night only underscored the concerning optics for the Biden campaign.
The video shows Biden giving the audience a thumbs up before rigidly staring out over the crowd. Obama, still smiling and waving, takes Biden by the wrist and gives him a gentle tug to walk off stage.
On Monday, in response to this article, a spokesman for Nancy Pelosi reiterated her support for the President, telling the Mail that, ‘Speaker Pelosi has full confidence in President Biden.’
The Democratic party machine has now elected to hold an online nomination, complete with a ‘virtual roll call,’ to formally select Biden as their nominee ahead of the DNC convention in Chicago in mid-August.
Part of the reason to go ‘virtual’ is to ensure a more controlled process should the party decide to select a replacement candidate.
In that case, top Democratic leaders would quietly draft the substitute nominee in advance.
That person would not be Vice President Kamala Harris, according to sources, who observed that Harris has already had to fend off a push to replace her on the ticket.
‘It doesn’t just become Kamala. Kamala only becomes the nominee if Biden dies,’ one blunt consultant said.
Another Democratic political insider believes that Harris has failed so badly as vice president that she has made it nearly impossible for Biden to step aside – because the party would have to contend with progressive blowback over passing over the potential first black woman president.
But if not Harris, then who?
Democratic leaders would quietly draft the substitute nominee in advance. That person would not be Vice President Kamala Harris, according to sources.
‘It doesn’t just become Kamala. Kamala only becomes the nominee if Biden dies,’ one blunt consultant said.
Strategists theorize that Democrats would have to hold a public event to symbolically transfer power to the new candidate. Biden, Obama, Clinton, Schumer, and Pelosi would publicly introduce and endorse the anointed nominee.
They would also have to convince Harris to throw her support behind the substitute, which would be a painful experience for someone so fiercely protective of their political future.
And the Biden Replacement would also be a risk for the replacement nominee. If he or should took up the party banner and then lost to Trump in November, their political careers may never recover.
All Democrats may have some painful decisions ahead.
Biden has said that American democracy is on the line in the 2024 election.
If his party becomes convinced that he’ll lose, they’ll feel compelled to take drastic – perhaps even unimaginable – action.