Joe Biden regrets having pulled out of this year’s presidential race and believes he would have defeated Donald Trump in last month’s election – despite negative poll indications, White House sources have said.
The US president has reportedly also said he made a mistake in choosing Merrick Garland as attorney general – reflecting that Garland, a former US appeals court judge, was slow to prosecute Donald Trump for his role in the 6 January 2021 insurrection while presiding over a justice department that aggressively prosecuted Biden’s son Hunter.
With just more than three weeks of his single-term presidency remaining, Biden’s reported rueful reflections are revealed in a Washington Post profile that contains the clearest signs yet that he thinks he erred in withdrawing his candidacy in July after a woeful debate performance against his rival for the White House, Trump, the previous month.
Might’ve, might not’ve. It’s irrelevant now, of course.
What Biden and Harris will be remembered most for, is their peaceful transition of power to a mentally unbalanced fascist tyrant, knowingly, compliantly, without even any public statements of caution.
Biden and Harris are ready to quietly shake hands with Trump and Pence, hand them control of everything, after then retire to a quiet life of luxury and highly-paid speaking engagements, where they’ll continue the Democratic Party’s proud tradition of speaking without really saying anything.
And so the toilet flushes.
There’s nothing wrong with peacefully handing over power to a person that won both the electoral and popular votes this time around.
We get what we fuckin’ deserve.
Without even any public statements of caution.
They’d both been making public statements of caution for months prior to the election. People didn’t listen, so now we’re here. Biden and Harris are not responsible for this. We are.
Was this truly “the last chance to save democracy” or just another election?
The campaign certainly ran and fundraised off the former messaging, but behaved like the latter.
People (including campaigning politicians) can genuinely believe democracy is on the line but refuse to be the one that ends it by refusing to give up power themselves when they fairly lose to their opponent. There is absolutely nothing wrong or illogical about that. If Trump refuses to leave office in four years it will be him ending democracy in the U.S. even though he got there by democratic means. This is usually how dictators get into power; a dumb, frightened populace hands it to them.
The campaign is bigger than one person, as is the party structure though - Pelosi had to be the one to kick out the pillars beneath Biden in order for him to end his run. Nobody in the DNC or the Biden campaign took the keys away from Grandpa until then. Even as an DC outsider who just follows politics, let alone has daily access to Biden, it was apparent that he was mentally declining, and rapidly so in the last two years.
Even before then, it was business as usual. “It’s my turn” got us Trump in 2016 after Hillary stood aside for Obama. “It’s my turn, again” got us Trump in 2024 because Biden/the staff did not court a fresh crop of junior politicians, nor stand aside gracefully in the Primary, nor even permit Harris the conditions to win. She publicly was saddled with no-win scenarios like the border or Gaza, whilst being relied upon to pass legislation in the Senate, becoming the record holder in that role.
And that’s before we even get to how Trump’s court shenanigans were permitted to play out and run down the clock. Biden needs to save his whitewashing of history and self-exoneration for his Presidential Library, his record is clear. Had he actually been a one termed ‘elder statesman’ who passed the torch and prepared the next generation, we wouldn’t be looking at a Republican triple sweep of government.
Just a small correction … Trump’s VP is JD Vance this time, not Pence.
Not like it really matters, Trump seems to be VP to Musk now.
I forgot … the next step of late-stage capitalism is to have a billionaire act as proxy for the duly-elected POTUS.
:/
I’m old, sorry, but yeah — gotta remember, Pence wasn’t crazy enough to make the cut this time.
They can either hand over control to someone who might destroy American democracy, or they can destroy American democracy themselves.