DOJ Special Counsel Findings on Biden's Senility Hint Democrats Might Not Be Completely Suicidal

Could forces still be fighting behind the scenes to replace Dementia Joe with a viable nominee?

Like most conservatives, for the longest time I took it as a given that of course Democrats would eventually swap out Joe Biden for a younger, better-spoken, non-sundowning presidential nominee, because Biden is one of the few Democrats who could possibly lose to a Republican nominee as comprehensively hideous as Donald Trump. I recognized that making the switch was complicated by the identity-politics implications of snubbing Kamala Harris, but not insurmountably so, and tried to warn Republicans not to dismiss the possibility of a surprise torch-passing to someone like Gavin Newsom or Dean Phillips at the Democrat National Convention.

As time went on, however, and story after story after story after story persisted about the smarter Dems trying to sound the alarm about Biden’s electability, I decided I had overestimated the Democrat Party’s own competence regarding their best interests, and came around to the conclusion Democrats really were going to stick with President Magoo because they were just that confident about the indictments sinking Trump in the general—a reckless, stupid gamble, to be sure, but we’re talking about a reckless, stupid party. Could it all be an act (a “psyop,” to use the vernacular of the online populists) meant to lull righties into a false sense of security about sticking with MAGA? Theoretically, but I don’t think leftists are sharp enough, organized enough, or good enough actors to pull that sort of thing off.

Well, yesterday I was forced to reconsider yet again, with the release of U.S. Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Hur’s final report on Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, which recommended against charging the president...but based that conclusion partially on some incredibly damning rationale:

Mr. Biden’s recorded conversations with [Biden memoir ghostwriter Mark] Zwonitzer from 2017 are often painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.

In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse. He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (“if it was 2013 – when did I stop being Vice President?”), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (“in 2009, am I still Vice President?”). He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him. Among other things, he mistakenly said he “had a real difference” of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact, Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Biden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Obama.

[...]

We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory. Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him by then a former president well into his eighties of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.

No big deal, just an official determination that the President of the United States is so cognitively feeble that a jury would feel too sorry for him to punish him for potentially jeopardizing America’s national security.

The White House promptly spun the report’s embarrassing assessment by insinuating whatever confusion Biden may have displayed was the result of fatigue—“I went forward with five hours of in-person interviews over two days on October 8th and 9th of last year, even though Israel had just been attacked on October 7th and I was in the middle of handling an international crisis”—then Biden himself went live to register his anger at the insinuation anything was wrong with his memory, in the process reinforcing that insinuation not once but twice.

As fun as all that is to crow about, the most important element of the story is the fact that such a report made it out of the Biden-Garland DOJ in the first place. Could it be that efforts to replace Old Joe are still alive and kicking?

The key mistake a lot of analysis has made on this question (including my own) is treating the Democrat machine like it’s all of one mind, when the truth is simply that there are factions that have always wanted to replace Biden and other factions that are loyal to him, and the Elder Abuse wing has simply prevailed so far. This report could be a sign there are cooler heads prominent enough at Justice to try to give the smarter Dems some ammunition to help change that.

In short, there’s no well-oiled plan in place to rope-a-dope Republicans into pitting Trump against a sharper, saner, non-senile challenger guaranteed to clean his clock, but there may very well still be Democrats working behind the scenes to replace Biden with one. Too bad it’s too late for Republicans to nominate someone whose electoral hopes don’t depend on his enemies sticking with an elderly incompetent.