Insurrection: Biden Out?

Rumors of civil war erupting over control of Democrat Party ticket

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A coup d'état may be in the making to oust Joe Biden as the Democratic Party's White House nominee, after the president's catastrophic performance at Thursday night's debate in Atlanta.

On Sunday, Bill O'Reilly posted to X:

"The decision has been made that the President will quit the campaign. Two reasons: Democrat internal polling says he cannot recover from the debate, and fundraising is drying up. So, it's over for Joe. But the White House doesn't yet know how or when to make the announcement. Stay close."

The report came against the backdrop of an emergency meeting, convened Sunday between Democratic leaders and dozens of top donors, to discuss potential paths forward should the president decide to relinquish his role as the Democratic nominee.

One party to the meeting told NBC News afterward that while many donors are still with Biden, "a lot of the participants are frightened," with some asking whether their contributions could be refunded.

Meanwhile, an unnamed senior Democratic official told NBC News that the next two weeks will decide who the Democratic nominee will be:

"We'll have polls and we'll have a money count. If they're good, it leans that he [remains in the race]. And if it's not, all bets are off."

PUBLIC POSTURING

Out front over the weekend, Democratic operatives rallied behind the president — though in many cases, weakly.

During a Sunday appearance on CNN, former Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) defended Biden, but appeared to inadvertently speak of his presidency in the past tense.

"We see Joe Biden up close. We know how attuned to the issues he [is], how informed of the issues he is, and I debate with him about legislation — not debate but discuss it with him — he's right there," Pelosi said, snapping her fingers.

"So, in any case, it was a bad night, let's not sugarcoat that," Pelosi conceded, adding:

"It was a bad night — it was a great presidency."

House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), meanwhile, seemed more saccharine than substantive in his defense of the president.

"It certainly was a setback," Jeffries told MSNBC on Sunday. "But of course I believe a setback is nothing more than a setup for a comeback."

Again on Sunday, Barack Obama's former campaign manager, David Plouffe, offered a more sober assessment, suggesting to MSNBC that Biden would stay the course, while noting that this would present Democrats an even steeper hill to climb.

"I think all signs point to Joe Biden staying in this race and being our nominee," Plouffe said. "And so if he does that, you know, this is a race that we were slightly behind heading into the debate; we'll see where the race stands as we process it in the days to come as we get more data."

Pointing to a new CBS News survey showing that 72% of Americans doubt Biden's mental capacity to serve, he warned: "You're not going to win the White House with those numbers."

"If Biden is to stay in this race, and I think he is, and I have all the confidence in the world in the campaign [his team] will run — they could run the perfect campaign [but] it won't get you to a win number of 270 electoral votes unless that fitness number were to get better," Plouffe observed.

Likewise, on Friday, former Democratic presidential candidate Al Sharpton offered a less-than-ringing endorsement of Biden's continued presence on the campaign trail.

"If you're on your way somewhere and you look at a store window at some new shoes, sometimes you keep the old shoes you got on," Sharpton said. "They may not be as attractive, but they're the ones that fit you and get you where you're trying to go."

For his part, Obama offered one of the strongest defenses of Biden's candidacy, taking to X on Friday in an attempt to assuage fears over the president's acuity:

"Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know," the former president said. "But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself. Between someone who tells the truth; who knows right from wrong and will give it to the American people straight — and someone who lies through his teeth for his own benefit."

"Last night didn't change that," Obama added, "and it's why so much is at stake in November."

Peering behind the curtain, however, Tucker Carlson later exposed the former president's public expression of support as hollow, noting:

"From an unusually good source: Obama's tweet supporting Joe Biden was disingenuous. In private, Obama is telling people Biden can't win, and he is therefore in favor of an open convention. Obama will not say whom he supports, nor as of yesterday after had he met personally with Biden to deliver the message."

'WHAT-IF' SCENARIOS

Reports indicate that Biden family members are pressing the president to stay the course — chief among them, First Lady Jill Biden, who by all accounts is hell-bent on keeping the White House in her clutches.

"In the hours and days after the debate, she kept her husband cloistered away from anyone who might convince him to drop out," Carlson noted. "Jill Biden is the driving force behind her husband's reelection campaign, just as she was in 2020, when other members of the family (including Biden's sister Val) considered him too impaired to run."

Even so, the now very public spectacle of Biden's decline is compelling Democrats to craft possible contingency plans.

During Sunday's emergency donor call," Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez laid out what would likely happen if the president were to step aside. She suggested that the lion's share of donor money would go to Vice President Kamala Harris, with a far lesser sum earmarked for the Democratic National Committee. Senator Chris Coons (D-DE), who was present for a portion of the discussion, affirmed Chavez Rodriguez's scenario as the likely outcome of a Biden departure, describing the fallout as "messy," while predicting that Harris would emerge as the eventual nominee.

From a conservative standpoint, a Harris-led administration would be as bad or worse than the current regime, but other potential successors are just as appalling. Reading like a "Who's Who" of America's Communist kingpins, it includes Gov. Gavin Newsom of California; Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois; and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.

Though each has publicly rallied behind Biden, behind the scenes, it's clear these power-hungry sharks smell blood in the water.

"The next generation of potential Democratic candidates understands all this as an opportunity," Carlson observed Monday on X, "and they're circling, especially Gretchen Whitmer, who is promoting herself aggressively."

For a glimpse at what a Newsom America, or a Pritzker America, or a Whitmer America would look like, one needs only to examine what these leftist autocrats have done to their respective states. Generations of Democratic misrule have transformed once-shimmering California, Illinois and Michigan into cesspools of blue stagnation — but never has the decline been so pronounced as under the Newsom, Pritzker and Whitmer regimes.

Sky-high rates of taxation, coupled with stratospheric costs for housing, fuel and other necessities, have forced many constituents to vote with their feet. Under Newsom, California — for the first time in its history — has lost population. Likewise, Pritzker's Illinois is hemorrhaging residents. And Michigan, though growing anemically under Whitmer, is forecast to begin declining in population in the next few years.

Meanwhile, these states have suffered ceaseless government encroachment upon civil liberties, including draconian COVID lockdowns and assaults on free speech, even as their do-nothing, Soros-funded prosecutors have allowed crime to soar. Admittedly, a few niche features are flourishing in contemporary California, Illinois and Michigan — namely, abortion mills, marijuana dispensaries and Drag Queen Story Hours.

NOT SO FAST ...

In spite of the groundswell of discontent among Democrats, booting Biden would be no easy task, cautions Souls and Liberty political analyst Jim Ellis:

"It is important to remember that because Mr. Biden is the Presumptive Democratic Nominee, meaning he has enough bound delegate votes to win the nomination on the first convention ballot, any change in this status would require the affected candidate's consent.

... The chances of the Democrats replacing Biden are very slim, and the procedural logistics, of which most who are publicly calling for a new candidate are not even considering, could cause major problems."

Any would-be replacement "would have to traverse 50 different state ballot processes and comply with all requirements in a short amount of time," Ellis notes, adding that "Other conditions might be impossible to overcome. Remember, the delegates are compelled, in most cases by state law (versus party rule) to support, at least on the first ballot, the candidate who the electorate chooses through the primary vote."

"The common view is that President Biden, should he agree to leave the campaign, would free his delegates, but a candidate might not have such power over every state delegation," Ellis observes. "As a result, some states wouldn't allow a new candidate to assume the delegate votes that the Democratic primary voters pledged to Biden. Or, for those places that would allow the swap, we could see lawsuits arising on behalf of the voters to block a particular state's delegates from casting a nomination floor vote for a candidate who their electorate did not support." 

"It also wouldn't be surprising to see some of these lawsuits originating from conservative oriented groups attempting to keep Biden on the ballot," Ellis adds. "While most of the lawsuits would probably not succeed, the new nominee's campaign could be tied up with court procedures in multiple states, which would consume valuable time and money."

Likewise, in an article for the The Daily Caller, Federal Election Commissioner Trey Trainor describes the prospect of replacing Biden as "impractical."

"Federal Election Commission requirements for new candidates would need to be met, posing additional challenges and potential delays," Trainor writes. "Beyond logistics and finances, replacing a nominee also raises ethical and democratic concerns."

"Presidential nominees are selected through a rigorous primary process where millions of voters participate. To disregard this process in favor of last-minute substitutions risks alienating voters and undermining trust in democratic institutions. It would signal to voters that their voices and choices in the primary were inconsequential."

'HYENA' HYPOCRISY

Assessing the latest developments in Washington, billionaire entrepreneur (and Trump-supporter) David Sacks took to X on Sunday, lambasting the hypocrisy of the Marxist Establishment, which for years has sought to torpedo Trump with accusations of "insurrection," "election interference," and threats to "democracy."

"Democratic Party operatives and their allies in the MSM are engaged in a full-scale insurrection to prevent the certification of President Biden as the Democratic nominee even though he won all the necessary votes in 50 state primary elections," Sacks wrote. "This attempt at election interference is not motivated by the sudden discovery of Biden's cognitive impairment (about which they've known, hidden, and gaslit for years) but rather by the fact that Biden is down in the polls and is likely to lose."

"They call this 'preserving democracy' but what they really mean is preserving their own power ... 'democracy' means permanent rule by the Democratic Party just as 'communism' meant permanent rule by the Communist Party."

"In the name of democracy, this caste of Party operatives has also sought to censor true speech on the Internet, prosecute political opponents, and even remove their leading opponent's name from the ballot," he continued. "Having failed at that, they are looking for new trickery. Like a pack of hyenas, they will gladly turn on each other if it means one more feeding on the desiccated carcass of their own corrupt rule."

"Voters should punish this mendacity up and down the ticket in November. This pack of liars knew about the president's dangerous infirmity and covered it up until the lie could be sustained no more. People this hungry for power should never be entrusted with it," Sacks warned. "The framers' vision for American democracy was citizen-leaders who would return back to their communities and businesses, not permanent rule by a corrupt Party apparatus that undemocratically swaps out front men like avatars in a video game."

"There is only one way to restore true democracy as the founders intended it," Sacks added. "Vote out this entire pack of liars in November."

Writer, editor and producer Stephen Wynne has spent the past seven years covering, from a Catholic perspective, the latest developments in the Church, the nation and the world. Prior to his work in journalism, he spent eight years co-authoring “Repairing the Breach,” a book examining the war of worldviews between Christianity and Darwinism. A Show-Me State native, he holds a BA in Creative Writing from Pepperdine University and an Executive MBA from the Bloch School of Business at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

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