Our Naked Emperors

Biden and Harris are revealing more than they intended . . .

Start your tape right now, because I'm about to tell you the truth. And f-you if you can't handle the truth. This version of Biden intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever. Not a close second. And I've known him for years. The Brzezinskis have known him for 50 years. If it weren't the truth, I wouldn't say it.

— MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, March 6, 2024

Roughly three weeks after Biden was forced to abandon his quest for re-election, it is difficult to believe words like these were spoken only months ago, not only by Joe Scarborough, but by many of President Biden’s most dedicated defenders.

In fact, as evident in this viral tweet, the approved MSDNCNN talking point until Biden was made an offer he couldn't refuse — either by threatening to halt fundraising, invoking the 25th Amendment, or perhaps by pointing to the Trump’s assassination attempt as a warning him to not argue with them — was that Biden was sharp as a tack.

Yet, evidence that Biden was no sharper than a hammer was evident long before his debate with Trump, and those who publicly praised Biden’s sharpness were well aware.

If the MSDNCNN reaction to Biden’s debate performance is sincere, and they truly did not know that our president had long become what he is, then one wonders what else they do not know. Did they know Biden was white? Had they heard of his son, Hunter? Did they know Biden’s uncle was not eaten by cannibals; that Biden was never arrested trying to visit Nelson Mandela; or that Biden was not ‘raised in the Black church?’ The depth of MSDNCNN’s ignorance about our current president would have to be astounding.

But we know they knew.

We know they knew of Biden’s lack of sharpness because in 2018 Senator Cory Booker, then a rival for the Democrat presidential nomination told us that “there’s a lot of people who are concerned about Joe Biden’s ability to carry the ball all the way across the end line without fumbling.”

We know they knew because in 2019 The New York Times reported a piece titled “Why Joe Biden’s Age Worries Some Democratic Allies and Voters,” which reported:

As aides and allies watched Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s first debate performance last month, their initial optimism about his abilities turned to alarm as Senator Kamala Harris laced into him over race and busing.

It wasn’t just Mr. Biden’s halting answers that worried some of them. They thought he was showing his age — that, at 76, he appeared slow off the mark, uncertain about how to counterpunch as he allowed Ms. Harris to land clean hits without interruption.

We know they knew Biden ‘campaigned from his basement’ in  2020, supposedly because of the pandemic, but more likely to avoid the mistakes he is prone to make. They saw as we all did Biden wander off at the G7 summit and knew, as we all did, that the clip wasn't “deceptively cropped.”

We know they knew because Robert Hur, who was appointed by Biden’s Attorney General to investigate Biden’s theft of classified documents, told us so. He concluded that, in essence, while then-vice president Biden did indeed steal documents, most likely for his self-enrichment, “at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Kamala Harris knew, even as she was on television claiming, “We have a very bold and vibrant president in Joe Biden” in February of this year. The same month Axios reported that old and vibrant Joe’s “reliance on notecards to help explain his own policy positions — on questions he knows are coming — is raising concerns among some donors about Biden's age.”

The reaction then of MSDNCNN to the revelation that Biden was, in fact, a dotard, despite having seen him guided by an Easter Bunny at a public event years ago, is reminiscent of the Hans Christian Andersen folktale, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” in which a crowd pretended that their king was not marching in a parade exposing his royal jewels because everyone feared he or she would be considered a fool if they said otherwise. Finally, a boy yelled out “The king is naked!” At this point, everyone admitted that all of the king’s birthmarks were visible to everyone who cared to look.

The debate was that parade. Trump was the boy. Biden supporters were forced to finally and publicly admit what they've known for almost a decade: Joe Biden is unfit to be president.

One wonders why they allowed Biden to debate Trump. Clearly they did their best to tilt the scales in Biden’s favor. It was a debate on a notoriously anti-Trump network with two notoriously moderators with rules thought to work to Joe’s advantage. They even gave Joe a week to rest and study.

Perhaps they thought Trump would decline the debate or, failing that, Joe would do well. To his credit, Biden was able to deliver a series of well-rehearsed lies; such as claiming that Trump advised Americans to “inject bleach” into themselves to kill the Kung Flu, that Trump praised Neo-Nazis at Charlottesville, that no U.S. troops died during his administration, and even that he had a golf handicap of six.

The excuses from the President’s side began pouring in even before the debate was finished: he had a cold, he was tired, Trump just lied so much, and so on. It was clear, however, that unless the unexpected occurred, like, say, an assassination, Biden would not keep the White House in blue hands, and something had to be done.

As The Post Millennial reported:

A new Substack out from Seymour Hersch indicates that former President Barack Obama and VP Kamala Harris, now presumptive Democrat nominee for president, threatened sitting President Joe Biden with the potential invocation of the 25th Amendment if he didn't drop out the presidential race and cede that spot to the veep. This would mean that not only did they force Biden out of the race, but that the Democrats know full well that Biden isn’t fit to serve out the rest of his term, but are comfortable letting him continue as a figurehead if it serves their efforts to retain power for the party.

Interestingly, Pelosi, who Biden seems to have confirmed was also a key player in this coup, is also reported to have had a key role in the supposed January Sixth coup attempt. She may no longer be House Speaker or House Minority Leader, but Pelosi is still one of the most powerful and dangerous figures in Washington.

However, it is Harris’ involvement that is key. Party elites may have preferred a number of others to replace Biden — Governors Newsom, Shapiro, and Whitmer are just three of the list of politicians who would likely be a more formidable candidate than Harris — but they could not threaten the stubborn Biden with the 25th Amendment without her participation.

This may be the fatal flaw of their plan. It hinges on Harris being popular enough to defeat Trump. As of this writing, despite the great honeymoon she is experiencing, this does not seem likely.

RealClearPolitics is reporting that Harris is leading Trump by 1.1 points: 47.8 to 46.7. However, the same site reports that on this date in 2020, Biden led Trump by 7.7 points, eventually winning by 4.4 points, and in 2016 Hillary led by 6.8 points, eventually winning the popular vote by 2.1 points.

That Biden and Clinton had an average lead of 7.25 points on this date and saw that lead decrease by an average of more than 22 percent on election day has to be concerning for Harris backers, even as they shout with daily headlines “Kamala Now Leading Trump!”

Why Harris is underperforming in the polls relative to her predecessors should be especially alarming to her fans. According to an August 4,2024, Pew Research article, Harris’s support among women is at 49 percent, among Hispanics 52 percent, and among African Americans, 77 percent.

MSDNCNN may be accurate when they trumpet how much these numbers are better than Biden’s numbers from a few weeks ago, but they are failing to mention that, historically, these numbers are a disaster.

According to numbers provided by the Roper Center, since Reagan’s great victory over Carter, the Democrat presidential candidate has won an average of  65 percent of the Hispanic vote. Harris’s 52 percent is 20 percent lower.

Since Reagan’s win in 1980, the Democrat presidential nominee was won, on average, 52 percent of the female vote. Kamala Harris, running to be our first female president, is seeing 6 percent less support among women.

Among African Americans, Harris, who leans in so heavily into her blackness that she once responded to a Black interviewer’s question by saying “Girl, I’m out here in them streets,” is being largely rejected. The Democrat presidential nominee since 1980 has won an average of 88 percent of the Black vote. Harris’s 77 percent is 13 percent lower. If that holds, she would be the least popular Democrat presidential candidate among African American voters since 1960.

These numbers could change, obviously. Trump faces sentencing in September over the infamous “hush money” case, there is a Democratic convention scheduled, and at least one debate likely. Currently there is a buzz among right-leaning politicos that Biden will soon resign, allowing Harris to go into November as the sitting president. Any of these things will change the poll numbers.

But to emphasize the point, at this moment, Kamala Harris, running to be our first Black woman president, is the least popular Democrat presidential candidate among women, Hispanics, and African Americans, in over 40 years.

Harris supporters should hope that in the few weeks remaining until Election Day that she can avoid that particular ignominy, even if she fails to take the White House.

If not, she may find herself as naked as our current president.

—DK