Cover-Up Fails. Kamala No Laughing Matter. Jon Meacham’s Biden Column Is. Van Jones Cries & More Idiocy

President Joe Biden is no longer a candidate for President.

He resigned from the campaign by posting a letter on social media, blindsiding his staff, who found out about the decision by tweet and was still whipping delegates. Liberal media hit hardest:

CNN’s Van Jones broke into tears on Sunday as he delivered an emotional reaction to the news that President Joe Biden was dropping out of the 2024 presidential race.

The senior political commentator said he was heartbroken over the decision and compared the Democrats’ situation to taking the car keys away from a relative who has become too old to drive.

“He’s fighting and he’s fighting and everybody’s so frustrated. And then you finally get the keys back. And then you just cry,” Jones said on the verge of breaking down live on TV.

Warning: Don’t throw up: Jon Meacham, one of the handful of posh historians who did so much damage to the country by persuading the doddering Biden that he could be another FDR, wrote this:

Mr. Biden has spent a lifetime trying to do right by the nation, and he did so in the most epic of ways when he chose to end his campaign for re-election. His decision is one of the most remarkable acts of leadership in our history, an act of self-sacrifice that places him in the company of George Washington, who also stepped away from the presidency. To put something ahead of one’s immediate desires — to give, rather than to try to take — is perhaps the most difficult thing for any human being to do. And Mr. Biden has done just that.

If you’ve got the stomach for it, Meacham goes on to compare Biden to Abraham Lincoln. Former President Barack Obama says that in withdrawing from the race, Biden has proven himself “a patriot of the highest order.” Which would be more convincing if we didn’t know that Joe Biden is furious at being forced to withdraw. From NBC News: “He’s really pissed off,” said a person in touch with Biden’s inner circle.

So, really, this is the story of a cover-up that failed.  

As Rich Lowry notes, Biden’s party didn’t finally coalesce around getting him out of the race for the good of the country:

They didn’t soulfully consider Joe Biden’s marked decline and decide, for the good of him, his party, and the country that he had to step down.

They lied, and they got caught.

The Democratic Party line on President Biden was that he had turned in an exceptionally effective State of the Union address. He might mess up a name here or there, but he had gotten better with age.

Then, the debate happened, and before it had ended, the party line was inoperative….

The president can be forgiven for being disappointed and angry that everyone who had been covering for him switched overnight.

There’s no honor among thieves, but shouldn’t there be at least a little among political co-conspirators?

Powerline’s Scott Johnson has an excellent piece about how the co-conspirators finally shivved Biden. Sean Collins US correspondent for Spiked Online says that the “Biden debacle shames the Democrats.”

President Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in a separate tweet after the withdrawal one and Harris spent the rest of Sunday calling Democratic leaders to lock down the nomination, according to Axios.

The Democratic National Convention is less than a month away, and here we go again: The New York Times is reporting that Democrats are executing a rapid “pivot” to Harris:

By Sunday evening, Ms. Harris appeared to have a glide path to the nomination: No other top Democrats announced plans to challenge her, though some stopped short of an endorsement, including the party’s top congressional leaders and former President Barack Obama.

With breathtaking speed, she took control of Mr. Biden’s enormous political operation and contacted Democratic leaders in Congress and state houses to ask for their support. The Biden campaign formally renamed itself “Harris for President,” giving her immediate access to an account that had $96 million in cash at the end of June. On an internal call, the Biden campaign’s leaders told staff members that they would now work for Ms. Harris.

The New York Times seems to be trying to play down Obama’s holding back on endorsing Kamala, claiming he just wants to play the role of “an impartial elder statesman.” Obama, who knew Joe Biden’s weaknesses up close and personal, only endorsed Biden at the last minute and without enthusiasm. Democrats may remember and wish they had heeded him.

Obama seems to favor an “open process” at the convention, which would result in “an outstanding nominee.” Meanwhile, Bill and Hillary Clinton have endorsed Harris, and Harris has raised $50 million in the wake of Biden’s dropping out. The New York examines Harris’s potential veep picks. Axios does, too, with a different list. The name of Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, who has endorsed Harris, is bandied about as someone less progressive.

Meanwhile, the U.K. Telegraph says that Biden avoided stepping down because he views Harris as not up to the job of defeating Donald Trump, and Telegraph columnist Zoe Strimpel writes that Harris is the “giggling fool who will doom America“:

In Harris, Biden’s choice of vice president was about as bad as they come. She ought to have been a good pick for running mate given the insanity of the race politics roiling America at the time. Harris is Jamaican-Asian, and the first woman to enter the Oval Office complex not as a spouse. She’s also a former attorney general of California.

Yet she has proved to be bewilderingly awful: rudderless, inchoate, and incredibly unlikeable. She was polling at 3 per cent before dropping out of the presidential race in 2020, before Biden took her as his running mate. “Fake”, “awkward”, “embarrassing”, even “downright evil” are some of the key terms that recur in opinion across the political spectrum about her.

Take this recent monstrosity, bad enough for a failing undergraduate zonked out on drugs, but unbelievable for an American VP.  “Equality suggests often everybody should get the same thing well that often assumes everybody started out in the same place as opposed to equity which is everyone should end up in the same place,” she said in May. Come again?

The liberal Slate, which says that America spent years turning the Vice President into a joke [with lots of help from the Vice President], asks, “Will Kamala Get the Last Laugh?” The drumbeat starts: If Biden is too gaga to run, isn’t he too gaga to continue as President?  

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be in Washington this week and he’d never say it but I bet Israel’s recent successful strike on Houthi targets in Yemen was probably easier with Joe Biden preoccupied with other matters.

And one solidly pro-Biden constituency seems to be getting nervous. That would be illegal immigrants. Maybe a little late, but don’t miss Politico’s take on fashion at the Republican convention. Babydog Justice won paws down.