Did Biden Drop Out or Was He Dropkicked Out?

W.J. Astore

A Palace Coup in DC

Amazingly, it remains unclear whether Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race on his own initiative, or whether he was dropkicked out by various DNC and DC swamp creatures.

When LBJ said he wouldn’t run for the presidency again in 1968, he gave a speech to that effect to the American people. Biden (apparently) tweeted a letter that wasn’t on White House stationery. Even the signature on the letter looks a bit dodgy.

As late as Sunday morning, members of the Biden team were insisting he was staying in the race. Biden campaign events were being planned for this week. Then, apparently, a sudden change of heart by Biden, captured in the aforementioned letter. Meanwhile, Biden remains in seclusion (or isolation), recovering, it is said, from COVID.

Fading into the background

I happen to think Biden reached the right decision, but that’s assuming it was really his decision. I can see where he may have dug in his heels, refusing to drop out, hence a palace coup. I’m guessing (and I stress here that this is a guess) that if you put Biden before a camera right now, he might say he’s still running in 2024.

Replying to a comment I made on Chris Hedges’s site, one reader put it well:

He was absolutely kicked out, delusional right up to the very last minute on Sunday morning. The last straw was the donors refusing him more money.

Another savvy reader replied that:

[This is] A message to anyone still foolish enough to think the D party can be reformed or do anything contrary to the wishes of its donors and the DNC ruling elite. Bad enough what was done to Bernie, but he was an outsider to them. This is explicitly about who rules; even conformist figureheads aren’t exempt. The Democratic party ceased to be democratic decades ago.

Remember how Democrats kept repeating “democracy is on the ballot” this fall? The hasty coronation of Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate for POTUS, after the rigged primary anointment of Joe Biden as that candidate, is decidedly undemocratic.

I wonder what the DNC will force Joe Biden to read from the teleprompter when he finally returns from Delaware. Perhaps a deal was struck for Biden to remain president for the rest of his term, which would allow him to pardon his son, Hunter. Somewhere, Jill Biden is unleashing primal screams.

Say what you will of the Republicans and Trump, but they managed to hold a contested primary where Trump beat a serious challenger, Nikki Haley, followed by a national convention that was “normal” for what passes as our democratic political process.

Interestingly, some commentators have suggested Kamala Harris won’t be the Democratic candidate, that someone else will emerge from whatever sham convention the DNC manages to throw together. But I think Harris has a hammerlock on the campaign funds, plus she’s pliable and therefore easily manipulable by the powerbrokers who surround her.

If Democrats are fated to lose this fall, why not with Kamala, who will be sold, of course, as the first Black and South Asian woman to run as president. Her loss can always be blamed on voter racism and misogyny, and, if that proves unconvincing, there’s always Putin.

10 thoughts on “Did Biden Drop Out or Was He Dropkicked Out?”

  1. Every single Democrat I know thought that Biden was too old and wanted him to drop out. To make what was apparently a popular and widespread opinion, confirmed by polls, into a “palace coup” takes some manipulation of the facts. I do not buy this editorial at all.
    jlubecki@georgiasouthern.edu

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    1. I’m curious, Jacek: How many Democrats do you know, and how long have they wanted Biden to drop out?

      Because, until a couple of days ago, most Democrats in the public eye were still arguing that Biden had a solid chance to defeat Trump this fall.

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  2. I agree with the writer. Leave it to the Trumpers to fantasize about “palace coups”. Biden may have needed some prodding, but the fact is that it was time for him to step aside, and he did so with grace, wisdom and decency.

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  3. It’s interesting that former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who knows something of the DNC and its ploys, also uses the word “coup” to describe how unceremoniously Biden was shoved aside.

    Here’s an excerpt and a link to his article:

    “The DNC’s machinations had guaranteed his [Biden’s] quest for re-election, until it didn’t.

    Under those circumstances, the manner in which the President was yanked off the ticket felt more like a coup, orchestrated by party elites, donors and the media, than the product of reasoned decision-making followed by a respectable departure from the race and subsequent procession to Vice President Kamala Harris. 

    Precisely because of the way it was done, and how vigorously his relative fragility was exploited from within the party, President Biden now faces serious questions about his ability to remain in office for the next six months. With the prospect of wider wars brewing in Europe and the Middle East the instability of American governance becomes a matter of global concern, and the question arises, who is running things?”

    Read more at https://denniskucinich.substack.com/p/the-democratic-party-rigged-the-primary

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  4. Mr Kucinich asks: “Who is running things?”

    The same people, groups, organizations, and institutions that have been running things for a long, Long time: America’s autocratic, oligarchic, plutocratic, patriarchal Ruling Political Class.

    And its Samurai, the Deep State: the military-industrial-congressional complex, the banking­ finance-printing press web, the techno-infotainment matrix, the petro-food-guns-n-drugs cartels, the pharmo-medico­ insurance-legal cabals, and the surveillance-secrecy-security-censorship-propaganda panopticon that owns and operates, and commands and controls the politicians and bureaucrats at center stage in America’s Reality TV extravaganza, and America’s $ 1 = I Vote system of government and governance that gets, puts, and keeps them there.

    That’s who is running things.

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    1. A poll from AP-NORC last August asked Americans whether they thought Biden was “too old to effectively serve another four-year term,” and 77 percent answered yes, including a majority (69 percent) of Democrats. 

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