VDH UltraThe Long Road to November. Part Two

Victor Davis Hanson

The implosion of the post-debate Biden incumbent candidacy marks one of the most unusual and duplicitous events in presidential history.

Since 2019, most media and Democratic elites have known that Joe was both cognitively challenged and yet the only viable camouflage for what had become an out-of-touch, hard-left Democratic Party.

In a conspiracy both of enforced silence and virulent attacks upon any who questioned Biden’s mental clarity, the media, the Biden inner circle, and the Obama beneficiaries, kept hidden from the public the true dimensions of the escalating dementia of the president.

What forced a confrontation with reality was not worry over the state of the Union directed by a cognitively challenged 82-year-old. (Does anyone believe that if Biden soared by 5 points in the key swing states after his disastrous debate and press conferences, the Left would have sought to remove him?)

Instead, Biden quit the ticket for two reasons alone: he was behind in most polls and threatened by his own “friends” to face 25th Amendment abdication from his presidency (and thus full Biden syndicate legal exposure) unless he quit his candidacy.

His formal speech to the nation Wednesday night—the usual muffled voice, 100-mile dead stare, brain freezes—was completely disingenuous. It was not “nonpartisan” but full of his usual hit-piece distortions.

Biden did not wish willingly to “pass the torch” to a “new generation,” but to the very end, he sought to cling to power and the chance of another four years by any means possible‚ until the bosses and donors threatened him with a humiliating terminated presidency.

Everyone had noted the ensuing paradoxes: Biden is fit enough to continue his presidency until January 20, 2025, but not so to head the Democratic ticket right now?

Whose interests were the leftwing donors worried about? The fate of the nation run by a near senile president for a dangerous six months, or their own pursuit of continued power over the next four months—and ensuing four years.

Here is what we the American people were left to conclude from the backroom work of the last 10 days:

In Orwellian style, just forget all the official Big Brother narratives that Biden was hale and cogent. Now, agree with the former “cheap fake” right-wingers’ worry that the president was and is cognitively unfit (but only to run again, not to continue his presidency.
Since July 21, Kamala Harris has become suddenly brilliant, articulate, and eloquent. She never was a “border czar.” All that went wrong from 2021–24 was Joe Biden’s fault, and not the responsibility of the suppressed voice of reason of Kamala Harris.
“Democracy Thrives in Darkness”: Having donors, insiders, the Obamas, and bosses threaten to pull the funding for the president’s reelection campaign and threaten Biden behind closed doors to remove him from office unless he abdicated are proof of “grassroots” input, a healthy, transparent democracy, and the will of the people.
The memory hole is recalibrated: Last week’s selfish Joe Biden, grasping to retain power without a thought of the ruin he would bring upon Democrats in November, is this week’s George Washington, who unselfishly quit the campaign solely to “pass the torch” to a new vibrant generation.

Given the unwillingness to defend the unpopular record of the Biden-Harris administration over the last four years, the Left instead relies on several modes of attack: one, Trump is a fascist who will destroy democracy; two, Trump is a convicted felon who belongs in jail; three, Trump will kill millions of women in need of abortions; four, Harris was not, as reported in nonpartisan studies, the most leftwing senator in Congress, but actually a Joe Biden-type of moderate: just think “good ol’ Kamala from the suburbs.”

What to expect?

Watch a repeat of Biden’s 2020 campaign style: Kamala will be infrequently seen and above all even more rarely heard, and her campaign will be outsourced to the media and leftwing politicos;
billions of dollars in leftwing money will swamp the Trump campaign;
again, Kamala is a moderate who grew up poor, was a victim of racism, alone prevents back-alley abortions, and was the brains of all that was good in the Biden years. Her real agendas are unpalatable, so they will not be mentioned—until after her supposed November victory.

Final Thoughts: expect an October surprise to follow the past leftist models of 2016 Russian collusion and 2020 Russian disinformation—only perhaps far worse.

Do not believe leftwing billionaires will “sit out” 2024. The Zuckerbergs, Gateses, and Bloombergs will pour in money as never before for Harris.

Reread Molly Bell’s 2021 Time essay to learn how the “cabal” and “conspiracy” will operate in 2024.