Dissolve the candidate

Biden's advisers would love to fire their candidate and elect another

No presidential candidate in American history has ever had the opportunity that President Joe Biden has. His opponent, a former president, is in the hands of twelve jurors, who will determine whether he lives a free man, or has the sword of Damocles of imprisonment hanging over his head. And what did Joe Biden do? He sent an actor to rail against a demagogue.

Actor Robert De Niro plays himself pretty well on screen (in every role), and he chewed the scenery outside the courthouse where Trump’s trial took place—there at the behest of the Biden campaign.

“We New Yorkers used to tolerate him when he was just another crappy real estate hustler masquerading as a big shot,” De Niro said. “I love this city. I don’t want to destroy it. Donald Trump wants to destroy not only the city but the country, and, eventually, he could destroy the world.”

De Niro said this in the face of a crowd of Trump supporters, some yelling “f*** Joe Biden!” I don’t think he did the sitting president any favors. If anyone is destroying New York City, it’s not Donald Trump, who has not lived there since taking the oath of office in 2017. (Perhaps De Niro should ask Mayor Eric Adams what his thoughts are about the Big Apple’s current rot.)

As for destroying the world, events seem to be doing a pretty good job keeping everyone on a path to darkness, and yes, Trump is doing yeoman’s work in that, but he has no real power right now, other than as the ghoul-in-charge of a cult of personality.

The problem here is that Joe Biden, in the best bully pulpit in the world, has allowed Donald Trump to define the race, the campaign, and the stakes. Biden has let his advisors and his party do the planning and policy for whatever things needing doing and planning to keep him in office. And they’re just about fed up with him.

In January, two of Biden’s top White House staffers, Jen O’Malley Dillon, and Mike Donilon, left to help run the campaign. The campaign is trying to bridge the relevance gap between an 81-year-old Cold War Democrat and a modern Democratic Party shot through with progressive and intersectional values. They’re using celebrities to build that bridge, but it’s having about the same success as the Trident pier (JLOTS) that’s become flotsam off the coast of Gaza.

And Gaza is a fracture point in the Democratic Party, mostly along the age axis. Here’s a CNN report on what happened to one celebrity who stuck her neck out for the White House:

Take Mariah Carey for example: Last December, the “All I Want for Christmas is You” singer took her two young children for a family visit at the White House, where she hung ornaments in the Oval Office and posed for photos with Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

She intended to spread some holiday cheer. But what she got in return was a scathing comment section, filled with accusations that she was turning a blind eye to the suffering in war-torn Gaza.

“He is supporting and contributing to a genocide,” one commenter wrote. “All I Want For Christmas is for you to open your eyes.”

“Disgusting. Another celebrity I’m ready to cross off the list,” another person commented on Instagram.

The problem with the Biden campaign, according to the campaign’s staff, isn’t the campaign. It’s the candidate. They are reportedly “freaking out” because no matter what events bring, it seems Biden loses support, and Trump—who has more defects than a 1983 Plymouth Caravelle—plays the victim of a “rigged” system. Of course the system is against Trump, because he plays Calvinball with the law and every societal guardrail. Sonny Curtis sang “I fought the law” but in Trump’s case, the law lost. (We’ll see what the jury decides, but I don’t see the bailiffs carting Trump off to Riker’s.)

Here’s a report from the Dallas Express on Politico’s take, what Democratic Party insiders think of the Biden campaign right now:

Pete Giangreco, a Democratic strategist, said the Biden campaign has plenty of work to do to ensure victory.

“There’s still a path to win this, but they don’t look like a campaign that’s embarking on that path right now,” he told Politico. “If the frame of this race is, ‘What was better, the 3.5 years under Biden or four years under Trump,’ we lose that every day of the week and twice on Sunday.”

No matter what the Biden campaign does with its coffers full of money: buying ads, courting celebrities, getting shoe leather and door knockers on the street, bubbling issues like abortion through a friendly press, the one thing it can’t improve is the product itself—Joseph R. Biden.

German playwright Bertold Brecht once observed this kind of phenomenon.

Some party hack decreed that the people had lost the government's confidence and could only regain it with redoubled effort. If that is the case, would it not be simpler, if the government simply dissolved the people and elected another?

The Biden campaign could redouble its effort, but wouldn’t it be simpler if they simply dissolved the candidate and elected another? I think the campaign staffers dream of that, but instead, like generals moving army pieces around a map, they have to fight the war with the army they have, not the army they wish.

Donald Trump is not going away. He’s unlikely to end up in a jail cell between now and Election Day. Even if he’s convicted of thirty-odd felonies, he will appeal, and Judge Juan Merchan will have to let him go on personal recognizance. Trump’s charges in Georgia are marred by Fani Willis’ hubris and sub-moronic corruption; she is facing a judge who will decide if she is to be disqualified from the case.

Jack Smith’s “fraud against the United States” case in Washington D.C. is frozen while the Supreme Court deals with Trump’s ridiculous claim of presidential super-immunity (which Jonah Goldberg observed was ironic since Trump also claimed Biden wanted to kill him with standard language regarding use of force in the Mar a Lago warrant—if presidents have super-immunity, then it’s perfectly legal if Biden orders Trump’s assassination).

The best slam-dunk case is the federal Miami charge regarding classified documents, but that’s also in limbo, because a friendly judge is bucking the rest of the “system,” refusing to approve gag order motions by the prosecution, and refusing to set a trial date until the other trials “deconflict.”

So from now until November, Trump is not going away. Biden has to deal with Trump, but Biden is busy, you know, “presidenting” (or whatever facsimile of that he can muster before the sundowning effect takes over).

Staff freakouts six months before an election is not a good look. I really don’t know what would be a good look for President Biden right now. Perhaps instead of sending octogenarian actors to speak for him, it would be better if Biden himself spoke, and said what’s on his own mind, versus reading the script prepared for him by his freaking-out staff. And when he speaks his mind, maybe it’s better when he doesn’t let that staff walk it back.

And when he speaks his mind, maybe it’s better if he doesn’t make stuff up.

But perhaps, I am asking too much.

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