This is the end Hold your breath and count to ten Feel the Earth move and then Hear my heart burst again For this is the end...
As a sucker for Bond flicks, I have always held that ‘Skyfall’ is the best James Biond film ever. And the theme song, that opens the film with Adele’s soulful notes cutting through the visual effects, is one of the mezzo-soprano’s very best. Pity that such a beautiful, haunting number would best represent Joe Biden’s imploding political career in an incredible week in American domestic politics.
It was a week when Donald Trump stared back at death and came out on top, all fist pumping, teeth-baring, blood dripping down his cheeks, and possibly sealing a providential route back to the White House. Vladimir Lenin is thought to have said that there are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen. Make that one week.
The fateful week started with Trump cheating death by the proverbial whisker as the assassin’s bullet grazed his right ear and gave his meandering campaign a new kiss of life, and ended with Hulk Hogan ripping off his shirt to wild cheers at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee as the rank and file of the party galvanized around the former president, handing him the nomination and showing the kind of unity of message and purpose that had long eluded the GoP. As the New York Times observed, “the shift in mood was striking: It has been decades since those at any Republican convention felt quite so confident — even optimistic — that they had the right candidate, the right causes and the right moment.” At the other end of the spectrum in the very same week, a bumbling, bungling, blundering Biden, struggling at times to remember the name of his secretary of defense or confusing a stranger for his wife , is busy fighting a bitter battle against his own party that wants him to drop the reelection bid as Democrats are increasingly gripped with the debilitating fear of not just a Trump return, but a landslide in November that may end up handing the White House, House and Senate to the Republicans.
The panic that started with Biden’s disastrous performance during the one-on-one debate with Trump has intensified into an aggressive paranoia. Nervous Democrats, including senior, influential figures, are leaning on Biden to reconsider the viability of his candidacy, while delegates and activists are erupting in disquiet and anger. Even the mainstream, liberal media – that had so far acted as a shield to obfuscate the reality of Biden’s rapid cognitive decline – is relentlessly questioning his mental capacity to serve, highlighting every misstep, every lapse, putting under microscope every bit of confusion.
It’s remarkable to watch them go after the 81-year-old like a pack of wolves, swatting aside years of painstaking efforts at muddying the waters over obvious signs of the president’s neurological deterioration. It is also fascinating (and even slightly scary) how quickly the regime media has turned on Biden, spreading video clips, stories and narratives that so long had been restricted to the MAGA corner of the Internet. Almost as if an invisible memo has gone to the major cable TV networks and publications that the obdurate Biden has outlived his utility and now must be cut off for the Democratic Party to remain in power.
The pivot is breathtaking! Take, for instance, New York Times , that in March this year was justifying Biden’s cognitive decline as his “style”, and comparing the US president to Beethoven, Wagner and Scorsese. It seems the ‘venerable’ newspaper has suddenly rediscovered its mojo, with reports in quick succession pointing out how Biden’s lapses have “ grown more frequent, more pronounced ” and that a Parkinson’s expert had visited the White House eight times in eight months. CNN is saying that ‘Biden’s health and age under even further scrutiny amid questions over his political future’ while Washington Post , that runs ‘Pinocchio test’ on “misleading Republican propaganda”, is now advising Biden “to come to grips with reality”.
It is possible that these media outlets feel ‘let down’ by a floundering Biden and are now hanging him out to dry, but a more likely explanation is that Biden’s debility has become so manifestly clear that to defend him for a second term at White House would be to nuke what’s left of the media’s dwindling credibility. The end state is that the pressure to ‘step down’ has become ‘insurmountable’ for Biden who is now in the unfamiliar territory of having to take up cudgels against a once friendly media, and getting besieged even further by a siege mentality. Reuters says 32 out of 264 Democrats in Congress “have openly called for Biden to end the campaign” while Washington Post , that is keeping a track on the rapidly growing number lawmakers and Senators lending their voice to the pressure campaign, at the time of writing this column puts the count at 37.
The trouble is that Biden is refusing to give in. A mild recurrence of Covid has forced him to get boxed inside his bunker at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and along with a runny nose and non-productive cough, his ability to see the ‘writing on the wall’ as comedian Bill Maher put it, seems to have diminished. As his campaign increasingly looks unserious and resembles a vanity project, an angry Biden is cocooning himself further into a small coterie of family members and a few trusted advisers, hitting out at detractors and vowing to return to “campaign trail” next week.
CNN quoted his campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, as saying, that Biden was “absolutely in the race” and “more committed than ever to beat Trump”. But the number of people sounding sanguine about this possibility, even within his own party, is becoming vanishingly small. And the president’s refusal to throw in the towel is being met with a covert and overt attempt by a handful of Washington insiders to oust him from the ticket.
No one is more at the forefront of this effort than the ultimate Dem powerbroker, Nancy Pelosi. Biden has the delegates, the Congressional Black Caucus and the liberal leaders. What Pelosi and the high priests of the Democratic Party are doing, therefore, is challenging the notion that the decision to stay in the race is solely Biden’s to take.
And their strategy seems to be centred on a drip, drip media campaign that would grow increasingly louder and more direct if Biden decides not to take the hints and stays put. Like clockwork, mainstream media outlets are exploding with speculations about Biden’s impending exit and mounting Democratic defections. One of them, Axios, “distilled” the Democratic disgruntlement over Biden to report that “top leaders of his party, his friends and key donors believe he can’t win, can’t change public perceptions of his age and acuity, and can’t deliver congressional majorities.
” Politico says that Pelosi, in a telephone call with Biden, had warned him that he has no viable route to victory and asked to refrain from “dragging down the party” along with him. CNN , that first reported on the purported conversation between the former House Speaker and Biden, wrote, “The president responded by pushing back, telling Pelosi he has seen polls that indicate he can win, one source said. Another one of the sources described Biden as getting defensive about the polls.
At one point, Pelosi asked Mike Donilon, Biden’s longtime adviser, to get on the line to talk over the data.” A fresh New York Times report indicates that Pelosi is cranking up the pressure on Biden – indicating that the phase of ‘addressing the sensitive issue privately’ has ended – and is of the opinion that “Biden cannot win”, and “that if he stayed on the ticket, Democrats would lose any shot they might have of winning back control of the House.” And if Biden were to drop out of the race, she favours “an open nomination process” where even vice-president Kamala Harris wouldn’t be considered as an automatic choice.
As this extraordinary drama unfolds in a very public way that seems designed to ultimately force Biden out of the race in a form of coup d’etat, what may have hurt the US president the most is former president Barack Obama lending his powerful voice to the ‘oust Biden’ campaign – all in the fateful week when Trump was basking in the glory of a united Republican Party remade in his own image. Nothing was made blatant. In his signature style , Obama “expressed concerns” to allies “during recent conversations” that while he feels “protective of Biden”, he thinks Biden’s “has been a great president and wants to protect his accomplishments, which could be in jeopardy if Republicans control the White House and both chambers of Congress next year.
” There are no direct quotes from Obama or his spokesperson. It is a masterclass in narrative-building but for Democrats who want to see Biden out, the job has become easier with a clutch of polls indicating that the momentum lies with Trump. While Biden is trying desperate damage control, including conference calls with Democratic lawmakers, interviews with friendly media outlets, aggressive rebuttal of Trump campaign, latest surveys from a number of different pollsters show the former president leads Biden nationally and in seven swing states , Trump’s lead keeps growing and in fact, nearly two-thirds of the Democrats want Biden to withdraw.
There’s one more aspect beyond Biden’s control. Panicked Democratic megadonors, from the Wall Street to Hollywood, are increasingly issuing threats that funds will dry up unless Biden leaves the race. Financial Times quoted one Wall Street donor tasked with fundraising for Biden campaign, as saying that “Biden’s gotten the message that there’s not another dollar of fundraising.
.. Members of Congress are getting more aggressive.
.. He’s just not going to be able to withstand it.
” Biden is still defiant. He still apparently harbours the resent of being pushed out of the campaign in favour of Hillary Clinton in 2016. He has dug in his heels, reportedly “ furious ” at the Democratic campaign to chuck him aside.
One can almost visualize the octogenarian president of the United States, taking punch after punch while doddering on the ropes, his face bloodier and more battered than the state Trump found himself in after the bullet tore his ear, yet still standing ground and refusing to get knocked out. And even as Biden cuts a lonely, sorry, defiant figure, raging against the dying of light, there’s a certain heroism in the way he has decided to fight back. Biden’s tragedy is that there’s not much glamour in his grit.
Trump did a better fightback. He has the better storyline, deadlier, more glamorous than Biden coughing his way into isolation, and more iconic, with fists raised against the blue Pennsylvania sky, surrounded by secret service agents as bullets were apparently still wheezing past. It made for riveting TV, and a reinvigorated Trump is raking in the moolah.
Where Democratic megadonors are threatening to halt funding, top donors are showering Trump with cash. Interestingly, Financial Times data analysis points out that Trump campaign raised more than $400 million between April and June mostly from small donors “furious at Trump’s criminal conviction in New York and billionaires flocking to his campaign”. The FT report states that “more than 450,000 donations” poured in on May 31, “the day after he became the first former president to be found a felon.
That smashed the previous record of about 85,000 contributions in a day after his mugshot was taken in Georgia.” It indicates two things. One, Trump’s base is no longer limited to just the MAGA devotees, and the witch-hunt and the lawfare launched by the Democrats against him may have been counterproductive to the extent of pushing swing voters to his side.
Four surveys by ‘Data for Progress’ on swing voters, results of which were published on Wednesday, show that swing voters have flipped position on Biden’s mental acuity and Trump’s criminal charges, with 53 per cent saying they are more concerned about Biden’s age, a 12-point increase from the last survey of swing voters. And only 37 per cent have said they are more concerned about Trump’s criminal charges, an 11-point decrease. Two, Trump campaign’s fundraising is likely to touch newer heights coinciding with his miraculous escape from assassination and a successful Republican National Convention.
A sense of optimism around Trump and his campaign is evident amid a growing sense of inevitability that stars are aligning to put Trump back into the White House. And even his detractors are picking up the cue. Washington Post reports that corporate donors had flocked to the RNC in Milwaukee this week, “packing luxury suites high above the arena, cutting checks, sponsoring late-night parties and mingling with Republican politicians as well as former and current Trump advisers over happy hours and lunches.
” These are people who had mostly shunned the former president after the January 6, 2021, incident. Elon Musk has reportedly pledged to donate $45 million a month, while Mark Zukerberg, while not officially endorsing Trump, has said in an interview to Bloomberg that “seeing Donald Trump get up after getting shot in the face and pump his fist in the air with the American flag is one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life.” It is interesting to note how Trump is handling the twin churns under way in American politics – his staging the most remarkable political comebacks in modern history, reshaping the Republican Party towards a more multi-ethnic working-class coalition after defenestrating the warmongering neocons, and the Democrats coming unstuck in a concurrent crisis of confidence in current leadership.
Two developments are worth noting. One, post-assassination Trump seems to have moved away from a populist rage towards a calmer, quieter disposition. This could be, as John McLaughlin, a longtime Trump pollster, told National Review the outing of “a very warm side.
.. a very human side that the left-wing media doesn’t portray.
.. that’s coming across now.
” This could also be a campaign ploy. The speakers at the RNC included former press secretary of Trump era, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, now governor of Arkansas, who said, “tonight I don’t want to speak about Trump’s successful policies – but the man I know.” And then there was Kai Trump, Trump’s 17-year-old granddaughter, who took the stage and related anecdotes of a doting grandfather.
“The media makes my grandpa seem like a different person, but I know him for who he is...
He’s very caring and loving; he truly wants the best for this country.” Overall, the attempt seemed to be to portray Trump’s softer side – painting him as someone who cares for his family as deeply as he does for his country. This is significant, because not only does this smoothen out Trump’s rough edges, but it also is a positive counter to the Democrats’ aim of portraying Trump as a cold, heartless, philandering demagogue who cares for none except himself.
That the Trump campaign would make such an attempt, points to the fact that it has learnt from mistakes and seems more surefooted – so much so that it has drawn serenity and composure from the depths of chaos. Trump also perhaps understands that the angsty image has done its job and now is the time to sound more inclusive and presidential. The second point has been widely commented upon – Trump’s attempt at unity rather than focusing on trademark divisiveness.
The former president understands that the assassination attempt is such an external shock that it changes things, and at a personal level, his near-death experience has imposed upon him a realization about the randomness of life. As Trump confidante Roger Stone told National Review , “What I see now about him is kind of a new calm. A new clear understanding that his life was spared for a purpose.
It’s a slightly different Donald Trump than we’ve seen before.” His speech and attempt at a more inclusive messaging has been swatted away by the usual suspects as insincere. But the partisan commentary misses the wood for the trees.
Trump is no Obama. He speaks to the masses in his distinctive incoherent, stream of consciousness style. Yet this unscripted, rambling nature lends his speech an authenticity that is in short supply in Biden’s carefully curated campaign.
Trump right now has everything going for him. His biggest foes within the party – Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis – have bent the knee before him in front of a rapturous crowd, cementing his status as the unquestionable leader. In picking JD Vance, Trump has also indicated where the future of the Republican Party would lie.
And as Trump takes confident strides towards the Oval Office, Biden is hunkered inside his bunker, taking dose after dose of Paxlovid to get ready for another round of battering next week. The bullet that Trump dodged with minimal damage has hit his Democratic rival instead. The author is Deputy Executive Editor, Firstpost.
He tweets @sreemoytalukdar. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
.
