We head to Chicago on a wave of euphoria, exuberance, exultation, excitement and even, you might say, ecstasy.
It’s going to be a glorious coronation – except that everyone’s mad at one another.
Top Democrats are bristling with resentment even as they are about to try to put on a united front at the United Center in the Windy City. A coterie of powerful Democrats manoeuvred behind the scenes to push an incumbent president out of the race. It wasn’t exactly “Julius Caesar” in Rehoboth Beach. But it was a tectonic shift and, of course, there were going to be serious reverberations. Even though it was the right thing to do, because Joe Biden was not going to be able to campaign, much less serve as president for another four years, in a fully vital way, it was a jaw-dropping putsch.
But at some point, when the polls cratered, Democratic mandarins decided to put the welfare of the party – and the country – ahead of the president’s ego, and stop catering to his self-regarding fantasy that he was the only one who could beat Donald Trump. Also, they all knew Biden was slowing faster than he and his family and his inner circle were acknowledging.
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Biden went from looking “forward to getting back on the campaign trail” to gone in one weekend, with the handprints of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries on the president’s back. And when Kamala Harris deftly cemented her position as the nominee, the party erupted in a dizzying sense of possibility.
How could Biden not be hurt that the Democratic convention went from four days of “sitting shiva,” as James Carville put it, to a joyful romp with Kamala atop the ticket?
Democrat after Democrat who had been close to Biden before conspiring to push him out had to confess to cable anchors that they had not been able to talk to the president, who was sulking in his tent.
Party leaders whitewashed the coup by ornately extolling Biden. James Clyburn told CNN that Biden had a record “that no president of the United States could ever match.” Pelosi proposed on CBS’s “Sunday Morning” that Biden’s face should be carved on to Mount Rushmore. “You have Teddy Roosevelt up there,” she said. “And he’s wonderful. I don’t say take him down. But you could add Biden.”
Despite the grandiose flattery, Joe, Jill and Hunter were not fooled or appeased.
Even if the Democrats wanted to put their bad blood in the past, the Nasty Man at the top of the Republican ticket won’t let them forget.
“Kamala wants NOTHING TO DO WITH CROOKED JOE BIDEN,” Trump ranted on Truth Social on Thursday. “They are throwing him out on the Monday Night Stage, known as Death Valley. He now HATES Obama and Crazy Nancy more than he hates me! He is an angry man, as he should be. They stole the Presidency from him – ‘It was a Coup!’”
As much as she cared for the president, Pelosi would never choose helping the House of Biden over helping her beloved House of Representatives. Their alienation of affection was clear in interviews she did to promote her new book, “The Art of Power.”
One of the most ruthless and successful tacticians in congressional history seemed sheepish about knifing her pal, and conflicted over whether to take credit. Et tu, Nancy? Biden must have thought.
When David Remnick asked Pelosi if her long relationship with Biden could survive, she replied: “I hope so. I pray so. I cry so.” She said, “I lose sleep on it, yeah.”
There was no kumbaya. Biden didn’t care about the “three generations of love” Pelosi told Jen Psaki that her family had for him.
The president already resented Obama for shoving him aside for Hillary, and he resented Hillary for squandering that opportunity and losing to Trump. Even though Obama tried to do everything quietly to protect his saintly status, Joe was furious that Obama was sidelining him twice.
Michelle Obama’s relationship with Biden soured when his family ostracised Hunter’s first wife, Michelle’s friend Kathleen; that’s one reason the popular Michelle wasn’t on the campaign trail for Biden.
Kamala can’t be thrilled that Obama, Pelosi and Schumer hesitated to endorse her because they wanted more moderate rivals to compete in an open mini-primary. And Biden and Harris staffs are also tetchy, as Kamala layers on her own people.
Biden still thinks he could have taken Trump, so how could he reconcile being shoved off the sled? On Wednesday, Ron Klain, Biden’s long-time adviser, expressed to Anderson Cooper Bidenworld’s feelings about the Jacquerie heard round the world.
“I think it was unfortunate because I think that the president had won the nomination fair and square,” Klain said. “Fourteen million people had voted for him and the vice-president as vice-president.” He said: “I do think, you know, the president was pushed by public calls from elected officials for him to drop out, from donors calling for him to drop out. And I think that was wrong.”
Those who pushed out Biden should be proud. They saved him and their party from a likely crushing defeat, letting Trump snake back in and soil democracy.
That would keep Biden off Rushmore.
- This article originally appeared in The New York Times