I guess this is old news but if you haven't heard it yet, you heard it here first. After Thursday's debate, it became quite clear that what's keeping Biden in this race is his wife, Jill, who realizes that if Biden doesn't get reelected, the rest of her life is going to be spent either providing elder care for an increasingly feeble and out-of-touch husband, or else finding him a good nursing home and going on with her life teaching at community college.
No more White House gatherings, dinners, speeches, interviews and the like. No more proximity to power and none of the power that comes with it. She does not want to give up that lifestyle, especially given what she's going to be exchanging it for.
Thinking back, Jill Biden has experienced the kind of life I'm talking about -- life with Joe from 2016 to 2020, when he was no longer even Vice President. I'm guessing they still got invited to their share of parties, but it's just not the same. And just hanging out with the gradually fading Joe at home was probably not exactly her cup of tea.
Today's papers report that Biden met with his "family" yesterday -- his closest and most trusted advisors -- and they've all advised him to run. But of course they did -- losing the election was a risk that each of THEM was willing to take, since each of THEM (think Hunter as well as Jill; who else is there?) stands to gain from Joe's continued relevance and possible reelection.
I have not tried to research whether there's an argument to be made that Jill Biden persuaded Joe to run for President in 2020. I'm sure she supported it, but in that case, Biden probably was pretty sure he wanted it. After all, he's been running for President since 1988 and this really did seem to be his big chance. But after he got it, I have a feeling their interests diverged. Joe had accomplished the greatest feat in American politics -- winning the presidency. And he could have shown great statesmanship by announcing early on that he'd only be in it for one term, and reasonable statementmanship if he had stepped aside at any point thereafter.
I'm guessing that if it had been up to him, he would have picked one of those options. But it probably wasn't and he didn't. And here we see that the Democratic hangers-on are no better than the Republican ones. We jeer at the Republicans who sucked up to Trump and defended him in the media. But now what about the Democrats? What about all those people who really know and have experienced Biden first hand, but who neverless kept telling us how "sharp" and on the ball he was? He may be on the ball enough to read a decent state of the union address off of a teleprompter, but anybody who actually spent time with him must have know that was about his limit.
As we ourselves get older, we start observing how people are no longer as sharp as they once were. I've seen lawyers who were brilliant and at the very top of their game in their 50s begin to start losing a step or two in their 60s already. While some of my elderly relatives have remained reasonably sharp, they have lost much of the energy they still had in their 60s. And of course, many others have not remained sharp -- it's the luck of the draw I guess. And it only gets worse every year - there's a natural cognitive decline that comes with aging, even apart from the ever-present possibility of Alzheimers, dementia, strokes, and other "natural" causes. Couldn't the Democrats see that?
Does Jill Biden really get her way here?
I could be wrong about Jill Biden, and if so, I'm sorry. I'm just calling it the way it seems. And perhaps I'm basing it on a certain level of experience with other selfish, narcissistic women who have found themselves in the spotlight and can't imagine not living it in forever.
I hope this doesn't sound sexist; rest assured I know there are men like that too. But since Jill Biden is a woman she reminds me more of that kind of woman than that kind of man.
In short, she is willing to put the man she supposedly loved for nearly 50 years through what promises to be four more months of stress and public humiliation as the campaign plods on, with the ultimate -- but increasingly unlikely -- goal of landing Joe in the White House for another four years, while it's quite clear that nearly every other person in the country would much prefer somebody else. The only thing the Biden campaign has going for it is that there are a lot of never-Trumpers out there who truly believe that Trump will destroy what's left of the country. That's what I am, but on the other hand, if this is what the country has come to, maybe that's just the way it ends.
PS As many commentators have noted, Special Counsel Robert Hur observed first-hand the same sort of cognitive issues that we all saw at the debate back in February. At the time, he was roundly attacked and accused of partisanship by Biden's defenders. And Biden himself went after Hur for supposedly asking questions about Beau Biden's death (the year of which Biden couldn't remember) when in fact it was Biden himself who broached that topic, ironically in order to help himself pinpoint dates. So even Biden's misguided attack on Hur may well have been based on his own inability to remember just what happened at the interview. Thus, President Biden's very attempt to explain away evidence of his cognitive decline was itself more evidence of it.
If you've been reading up on this issue, you probably also know that Jill Biden was one of the President's staunchest defenders after the Hur interview, and that she sent off a fundraising email shortly thereafter, which apparently was very successful at raising funds. The email is quoted in several places, but I could only find it reproduced on Twitter/X. So for your convenience I'm reproducing it below:
