Dear Readers,
I have a question. Putting aside views about his track record, debates about whether the Nov. 2020 election was stolen or not, what are the odds in your view that Joe Biden will have to be replaced as POTUS by 2022? Second, what do you think will be the specific trigger for this? There are already signs, so people say, that he is forgetful and showing signs of cognitive decline. (Lest anyone think this is a snide political point, bear in mind that both Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher suffered in this regard, although as far as I know they were okay while in office.) What sort of things does Biden have to do, or not do, for his Vice President, Kamala Harris, and possibly others, such as the House Speaker and Senate Leader, to table some sort of request/demand that he be declared unfit?
The way that this would play out could be very uncomfortable for certain people. For a start, let’s just say that even though all the lawsuit challenges failed and the GOP actually gained seat in the House – which might suggest that the election did not go the way it did mainly because of fraud – a lot of people, not just the usual conspiracy types, think bad things happened late last year. If it turns out that a largely supine media and establishment dropped the ball while a man in his late 70s with cognitive issues was pushed forward, with alleged early signs of a problem, this will fuel even more deep anger about what is going on. In fact it could be particularly lethal for the Democrats, who are going to have to explain this away. Ms Harris is not liked outside a small sphere. She didn’t win a single delegate vote in the Democrat primaries and was crushed in the debates by the likes of Tulsi Gabbard. The margin of the popular vote was large, true, but not the sort of gap that is unsurpassable.
Concerns about Biden’s condition come from unusual places. The leftwing writer Ted Rall, whom I remember as being a fairly horrible individual, has this article concluding that Biden has an issue.
By the way, let me finish with the important libertarian/constitutional sort of point – this proves is the need for small, limited government. The smaller government is, the less it matters if the man or woman at the top isn’t up to the role. A book from the CATO Institute, about how the US presidency has become a sort of “cult”, is all the more apt.
I see no reason why his condition would deteriorate such that it would be necessary to replace him – ie if you are willing to pretend that he has some idea what’s going on now, why wouldn’t you continue to pretend that even if he never emerges from his basement at all.
So, absent death, whether to replace him is largely an internal Democratic Party political question. Kamala Harris would like him to go, but lots of Dems would prefer not. Lots of people in power now are Obama acolytes not Kamala acolytes. Why would their position improve if a dummy was replaced by a real person? Likewise why would Obama like it ? Only if polls showed Biden’s popularity diving, and so far Americans don’t seem to mind having a dummy. Indeed having a dummy is quite useful. It’s hard to get angry with a dummy.
There is also a technical reason to prefer keeping Joe. If Kamala takes over, there has to be a new VP approved by House and Senate, and the Senate would be 50-50. Of course the Republicans are by no means solid, but why would the Ds take the risk ?
So, I’d say the odds on replacement are no more than 15%.
I’ll add that if he is replaced it won’t be via the 25th Amendment, which could get very messy. He’ll just be told to resign, while Dr Jill is tied up and gagged and put in a wardrobe till the paper is signed.
You write, “The smaller government is, the less it matters if the man or woman at the top isn’t up to the role.” That is a true and important point that needs to be made often, although since the invention of the atomic bomb even if the US were to re-embrace small government with a fervour beyond my wildest dreams, the president would still be the person with his or her hand on the big red button.
I’d put the odds of the Democrats moving to replace Biden at above 50/50. I’m willing to believe that some of his gaffes are just the sort of verbal stumbles he has been making all his life. They do not in themselves indicate incapacity – the origin of the term “Spoonerism” should teach us that some very clever people are prone to this sort of thing. (Not that the other side ever extended the same courtesy to George W. Bush for his much less egregious verbal flubs.) However they are accelerating and it is being noticed. The video of incident on 8 March when he struggled to name his own defense secretary (“The er former general – I keep calling him general – my, my er the guy who runs that outfit over there”) has 4.2 million views.
I have just noticed that the article by Ted Rall that you link to is actually from March 11 2020. That being before Biden was selected as the Democratic candidate, it was probably just Rall pushing for another candidate, at a guess Bernie Sanders.
Since incumbency is usually a strong advantage in US elections, and since the 22nd amendment of the constitution says “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.” I find the cynical part of me expects that we’ll muddle along as necessary until fewer than two years remain in Biden’s term of office, and then he will resign. That way Kamala gets 2 years to (hopefully) not mess things up as president, and potentially two successive elections where she wins the office herself, becoming the 2nd-longest-serving US president (FDR had 3 full 4-year terms and part of a 4th, before the 22nd amendment was passed.)
I predicted he wouldn’t last 100 days (May 1st). There is no chance he will survive til the end of 2022.
If a certain Barry Soetero became V-P on the resignation of Biden, with a vacancy arising as the V-P inherits, should Harris resign as President he could become President again as he would not have been elected President for (the balance of) a third term, so the bar on being elected more than twice would not apply.
Douglas2
Indeed, as we saw last November.
Natalie : it is being noticed.
It is being noticed by those who hope to benefit from Kamala getting in – ie those Dems who are currently out. Since it is Obama loyalists who are currently in, however, there is a strong cadre of Dems who do not want Biden replaced. When the battle is against the Tsarists, you may not notice any failings in a fellow Bolshevik. But once that battle is won, it becomes an intra-Bolshie struggle for power. Hence it is not at all surprising if Joe’s mental struggles, unnoticed by all Party members before 3 November, are now noticed by the Dem out-group, who can hope for office from Kamala.
Douglas2 : I find the cynical part of me expects that we’ll muddle along as necessary until fewer than two years remain in Biden’s term of office, and then he will resign.
If they win a clear majority in the Senate in 2022. There is a real problem getting rid of him with the Senate at 50-50, or if there is an R majority in 2022. Even the squishiest R Senator is not going to vote for a hard left D VP, so they’d have to put up a softy, which would enrage the base. The Rs neatest trick would be to say they’ll vote for Manchin 🙂
My reply FWIW.
1) IIRC, Kamala won 3% of Dem primary voters’ votes. I am inclined to believe that was indicative of her actual support from Dem voters. (She is more popular with Dem apparatchiks.)
Biden’s primary campaign was failing and then turned the corner. IIRC he was backed by some people described as being very in charge of the Dem party machines in the states/cities that made him back into a front-runner. I have no such surety Biden did not truly win the Dem primary as I have that he did not truly win the election (for one thing, I have spent far less time investigating the former – and the same is true of many others), but Dem primaries and vote fraud are not strangers. There is reason to believe he was unenthusing Dems before he was unenthusing voters in general. However the more those who actually voted for him were not voting for him as such, the poorer he can get before it impacts their reasons for voting for him.
2) If people outside the media bubble were to show growing but passive public awareness and disgust at Biden’s failing functionality, the party managers who could endure and/or media-manage his strange basement campaign will not be made less willing to endure and/or media-manage his strange press-conference-lite presidency. More evidence of public hostility than a polled belief in Joe’s senility would be needed to make his entourage even care, and a true crisis would be needed to make them act, and I think it would have to be a domestic crisis – one in which Joe’s inability to act effectively directly affected them, one it looked like the Republicans (and/or enough of the public) were not willing to waste.
3) Preserving Joe till 2024 lets every powerful Dem hope to be the presidential candidate. Replacing him with Kamala means either she’s the candidate or the Dems rather explicitly dump a black(ish) woman. Kamala, and those who know they won’t be the candidate and will get a job from her, would support replacing Joe. Potential candidates, and those who hope for jobs from one of them, would not – and may well be more numerous. The party might even worry privately about having another ‘unlikable Hillary’ on their hands.
4) This might of course mean Joe is kept on too long – till something abruptly makes it in-your-face obvious even to the inattentive part of the public that the Dem elites have known all about it for a long time. But Joe survived two presidential debates, can still read a teleprompter and may function well enough for the MSM for quite a while yet. When media types write with mock regret that Joe is bad for comedy because he is too normal and lacking quirks to make fun of – it means they will do heavy lifting for him.
5) The above ignores the possibility of a powerful but ‘high-minded’ Democrat deciding to do the right thing from their PoV. It also ignores the possibility of low-minded intra-party squabbles over things we know nothing about suddenly exploding into consequences. Etc. Either could wildly alter the probabilities.
Conclusion) The end of point (2) and the start of point (4) speak a little to the possibilities the OP writer is seeing. Burke, long ago, was asked a not wholly dissimilar question during the French revolution (whose leaders were not going senile – internal rivals, supplemented by the occasional assassin, usually saw to it they did not live long enough to have the chance – but who had some objectionable qualities). Burke replied that he must actually meet and see and talk to the people who thought bad things were happening before he could know whether such thoughts would have consequences. Like Burke, I am in the UK, not in the country concerned (of course, even those who are in it meet and talk less than usual thanks to lockdown – don’t underestimate the elite-empowering, voter disempowering effects of that).
Once China pays him and his family several million dollars, Biden will declare himself highly fatigued and will pass the baton to Princess Kammy the Commie. This will happen after nine months in office. Maybe a year tops.
Joe Biden is a shambolic shell of a man kept going by careful manipulation of his schedule, a refusal of the media to do their job and (probably) some form of medication to give him the necessary stimulous for brief, adulatory, non-probing video presentations that are presented as being live, but more likely pre-recorded and edited to remove all of the moments of senile dementia.
How long will this last? Until someone decides to spill the beans or the media remembers that its job is to challenge the government, not cover up for it, but then they are as tainted in this whole affair as anyone.
I’m guessing they will keep it up (if they can) until we’re past the 2-year mark of Sleepy Joe’s not-very-executive presidency at which point he will be replaced by Kamala using the 25th Amendment.
Nope, because no-one can become Vice President if they would be excluded from the Presidency to prevent exactly this kind of Putinesc manipulation. It might be possible if “Barry Soetero” were to become Speaker of the House and arise to the role of Acting President*, through the line of succession.
However, even in this fictional scenario it would be challenged as soon as “Barry Soetero” was proposed for a role which brought him into the Presidential line of succession and certainly before any triggers such as Kamala being forced to resign or Dementia Joe being 25thed.
* – Only a Vice President can become President through death of incapacitation of the current POTUS, someone arising through the chain of succession would merely be Acting President
With all due respect, it is silly to set aside the question of whether the election was stolen. It was stolen, in plain view, by people who are willing to do anything for political gain. Having stood the Constitution and various electoral laws on their head, there is no longer any reason to expect other laws to apply. From here on out, the people in control will do what they wish, albeit with a show of window dressing and charades and the occasional tactical delay. There will also be unavoidable intra-party fighting. It’s all out in the open now. This is the new reality within which we have to operate.
They have snookered themselves with Presidisn’t Xiao Bai Den, whose cognitive decline can’t be hidden (as was Wilson’s), even with the support of the Lügenpresse. His value as a puppet is fading every day. His replacement is not going to be a matter of pure choice or tactics; it is going to be dictated by unavoidable reality. He will either finish going nuts, or die, or both. He’s not fit for the job now and will not remain in it for the full term (I’d be surprised if he lasts until 2022). Even supposing he lives through the end of the term, there will be an ongoing leadership struggle between the democrat insiders who are in it for the money, and those who are in it for the ideology. The ideologues are stronger than ever, but the smart dollar is still with the grifters. If Kneepads can persuade the money people that she’s really on their side after all — and I think she is — then she will be given the job, one way or another. If she can’t persuade them, then someone else will be given the job, and some sort of BS excuse will be papered over it and waved through by the US Supine Court.
As for small, limited government, that idea’s gone the same way as the rule of law. Willing or not, we are now fully embarked on an era of Do Unto Others. It’s all very well to keep the dream alive, but anyone here who hopes to make a near-term political difference rather than just raging at the clouds is going to have to get his hands dirty. Unlike the heroes of ’89, I do not expect to see a principled philosophical opposition win in my lifetime. The contest is now about who gets to put his knee on the other fellow’s head. Or, if you prefer, who gets to put his knee on our head. It is war. We need to wake up to it.
While I agree that the election was stolen, since nobody (including the guy it was stolen from) is prepared to actually kick up enough of a fuss to change the situation, why should anyone else give a damn?
If American’s want to take back the US government by force and re-instate Trump, they are welcome to do so, but I don’t fancy their chances in the slightest, certainly not after the bullshit “insurrection”.
Plus, why is the 2020 election any different from 2000 or even 1960 when exactly the same thing happened?
My guess: Harris was acceptable as the VP partially because she had such dismal support in her quest for the presidency.
Biden has a significant chance of not making it the entire four years (and he’s already announced that he won’t run again.) Many other Dem candidates would love to succeed Biden and use some of that incumbency quality in his stead, and saw Harris as the least likely VP choice to take on Biden’s mantle and incumbency and so foreclose their own 2024 chances.
So, if Biden makes it for four years (and I don’t doubt that he can – the President can actually function as a nullity if he desires or requires), then some other Dem will win the 2024 primary and try to carry off the “fellow Dem” incumbent role – and Harris will not interfere with that process, as she has no real electability.
But if Biden doesn’t make it for the full four years, and Harris steps in, she is still too unloveable to automatically assume the role of Dem candidate in 2024, leaving the field open for all other possible candidates.
I think they’d like to see Biden totter through all four years, but have a backup plan for if he doesn’t. Harris is a null placeholder, put in to appease all of the other national-name Dems.
But I doubt that this will matter much in 2024 anyway. The Dems have moved from the Great Man of Character model to the Faceless Committee of Solid Ideology. They’re no longer voting for one wonderful leader – they’re voting to keep the bad people out of power, and the specific face used becomes less meaningful.
I am surprised that he has lasted this long, to be honest. I suspect that he was a stalking horse for someone that was unelectable and once his usefulness was over then he’d suffer from Arkancide.
His non appearance is causing eyebrows to be raised and not just in the “right wing” press. This blog entry suggests that his appearances are being CGI’d (as John Galt commented above) and not being filmed in the White House – the comments on that link describe a film studio White House set up elsewhere for such purposes. So is he in that Big Hair Salon in the Sky already and sniffing hair? Your guess is as good as mine and with their being more troops in Washington DC than all the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq combined, then getting close enough to ask the question will be problematical. The Bolsheviks already had the Kremlin so did not need to build from scratch whereas the current regime needs to do so and is losing credibility for it, at least in my opinion. As one meme I saw said, “What is the most ridiculous conspiracy theory you have heard? Answer – That right wing people owning over 600 Million guns and billions and billions of rounds of ammunition wanting to take over the White House/Government would forget to bring a single gun or round of ammunition along …”
As for the “successor” (or should that be “sucker”?), Hillary Clinton is still burning to gain the Presidency and anyone who is selected as VP will need to VERY CAREFULLY watch their back so as not to fall victim to Arkancide too. Obama or Clinton? Kneepads Harris had better make sure that it is Obama otherwise succession via assassination is too tempting.
So, I think when it is convenient or politically advantageous, it will be announced that Biden has indeed died. The fickleness of politics means that it will be virtually impossible to predict but my money is on him being dead right now.
Anyone got an Ouija board to check?
JG
(dreadful, sloppy term btw)
The 22nd Amendment states:
Nothing there about a person being appointed as V-P (on confirmation, not election, by the Congress) and then succeeding in the case of the President’s departure. See the relevant parts of the 25th Amendment:
And the last sentence of the Twelfth Amendment (which, obviously, precedes the 22nd and 25th) does not prevent an elected twice past President from holding the Vice-Presidency.
i.e. under 35, not 14 years resident, impeached or not a natural-born citizen. Nothing there prevents a former President sneaking back in via the Vice-Presidency.
1. I too am disappointed that this outright theft hasn’t led to a revolution. We should care because the blatant theft of the election makes clear we’re not actually playing the game most of us thought we were playing. New game, unknown rules, great uncertainty. On that theme, the US maladministration has immense and immediately worrisome knock-on effects, especially anywhere that China feels the urge to throw its weight around.
2. Like you, I don’t fancy the chances of the present regime being turfed out the frisky way. Then again, I fully expected the democrats to try to steal this election, in much the same way they actually did, and I still wasn’t prepared for it [if I had been in government, I would have been prepared]. There are a lot of patient but very angry people out there recalibrating their thoughts. This is not over until they agree it’s over.
3. The dems tried to steal the election in 2000 but failed. They successfully stole the election in 1960. It’s always a temptation, and I suspect they’ve been stealing everything within the margin of theft for much longer than I’ve been alive. The critical difference is that this time it’s been done with the full, open, corrupt support of the supposedly non-partisan public service, including the intelligence agencies and the court of highest jurisdiction. There was a time when people in government would not stand for this. There was a time when ordinary citizens would not stand for this. There was a time when an ordinary honest man might realistically hope for some form of redress through official channels, if only at the next election. We are no longer in such a time. That’s why it’s different, and why it matters.
So, you live in a Banana Republic, you have done since at least 1960 and you’ve only just realised?
Welcome to the club.
Here is your honorary banana.
Considering China’s threats against Taiwan, the Philippines, and Australia, to shut up and do as they’re told, I expect that it wil be Chairman Xi who determines the timing of *Biden’s replacement. What better time to launch an invasion than during a power transition of your strongest adversary. 🤷♂️
People stay in bad marriages forever, in the vain hope that things aren’t as bad as they seem or that they may improve. They mostly do this when the marriage was once worth fighting for.
This is that same situation. We tend to stay within bounds as long as possible, because to go outside of bounds is an ending act. There’s no going back from some things, and the best option remains being able to go back.
What Natalie and Douglas2 said… or at least some of it.
(Sorry, didn’t read any further comments today. Maybe tomorrow.)
+ 1 to Behind Enemy Lines (March 15, 2021 at 10:44 pm) critique of John Galt (March 15, 2021 at 10:05 pm).
(BEL’s point 3) 1960 was stolen by Mayor Daley in Chicago and Lyndon Johnson in Texas. John Galt is mistaken to think that 2000 was stolen. After 2000, much useful statistical work on the voting was done (some by people who would have been happy to believe 2000 was stolen – and elite interest in the idea was the background to much of this work being done and not denounced by the usual suspects). The stats indicated fraud in the usual specific notorious locations (e.g. Chicago) but not generally.
(BEL’s point 2) Two years ago, I wrote this – yet should not adopt a wiser-than-thou attitude to BEL’s second sentence in point 2 because I was hardly foreseeing everything when I wrote that post. (Perhaps Trump was in the same state – knowing it was intended and planned, and yet surprised by the precise combination of organised insolence, and surprised again when judges ruled that a law saying elections supervisors ‘shall’ do certain things did not means it was mandatory, and similar.)
(BEL’s point 1) Twitter’s founders boasted two years ago that the left would reorganise America to be as California, where only one party mattered:
The wisest reply came not from me but in a comment – that the twitterer’s planned “civil war”
Professional protestors use their own graduated violence and criminality to manoeuvre the police (or whomever they are baiting) into what they intend to be lose-lose situations for the latter, who either confine their opposition within such strict limits they look defeated or else up their response to include force and get blamed for it as the ‘real’ criminals. Like much else, this technique has spread from the student activists of our youth to the very summit of US politics today, which is now being carried on by these other means.
A post-mortem can find much that Trump should have done, but John Galt’s dismissiveness:
both ignores all Delphic futures and ignores some rather, ah, significant issues. It would be cheap for me, living comfortably far off in a UK where, for all our current problems, the deep-state’s attempt to reverse Brexit failed, to lecture my US friends on their not yet having achieved the like. I mentioned Burke at the end of my prior comment. Something he also said in the same discussion I quoted from was that failed attempts merely discredit their cause. You can always argue – and in that sense Trump kicked up plenty of fuss – but JG is hardly fair to write as if each lockdown-isolated individual needed only to decide to kick up a bit more ‘fuss’.
Thank you, Niall.
“Organised insolence” – now there’s an expression I’ll be putting to use.
I would add that until Caro’s detective work in his LBJ biography, the theft of the 1960 election was spoken of but not so widely accepted as established fact. When Gore tried to steal the presidency in 2000, he used virtually the same playbook as LBJ did in stealing his own senate election in ’48, which in turn the dems used again in 2020. In short, they wait until counting is finished in all but a handful of corrupt jurisdictions, create the votes they need out of thin air, announce victory and then condemn anyone who complains for trying to steal the election.
Once you see it plainly revealed for the first time, you start seeing it everywhere. The Trump administration has absolutely no excuse for falling for this old gag. But the critical difference is that the USSC is now either corrupted or frightened into silence, so there’s no longer any avenue for appeal.
Anyway, I may not live to see the end of the present democrat party regime, but I’m confident I’ll see Biden depart from it before his nominal four years are up.
As to how fit Biden is for office – well, he’s unfit at this time, most likely. I think his administration can keep a lid on it for about a year. Doing what they have done, minimizing Biden’s public appearances, etc. That there was no State of the Union address is significant – Ol’ Sundown Joe doesn’t do well after his bedtime. Or perhaps I’m just being cruel. But, in all honesty, a year.
Let’s accept that we are a nation of men, not laws. What matters is raw power.
Chances of Biden being removed before two years are up is probably 10%, and that is only if he has a stroke i public. Anything less and he gets propped up. Kamala can’t can’t him out before two years, or it counts as one of her two terms. She doesn’t want to be a short termer.
Chance of Biden being removed AFTER 2 years is more like 95%. If dems control Congress, they will conspire with Kamala to have Biden removed. It’s the only way she can possibly win a primary or general election. She has to have two years in the office to prove she can govern or she will lose to pretty much any primary challenger. She has to remove Biden to have a shot at being president, and she has the bribe of VP to offer the Speaker to push it through.
At the same time, if the GOP controls congress, same odds. They will either force Kamala to resign and then appoint a VP to take over, or they will let her have the office and put a GOP VP in. Odds of this are 100% if trump runs and wins a house seat and the GOP have control. He WILL be the speaker, if for no other reason than that no one would be willing to take the job knowing he will be at their back. Even if a rep wanted to vote for someone else, they can’t go back and tell their constituents they voted against trump, and no one sane would want to do the job with trump sniping at them 24/7 from the back bench.
How powerful are the social media? Do they have the ability to live up to their threats to make certain 2016 will not happen again? Are the threats Google made to insure the election couldn’t go Trump’s way a tangible indication that they at least believed they could do something to affect the elections?
Harris couldn’t win a primary election, not even close within their party. Yet she was chosen to be the VP, paired with a man who was showing serious signs of dementia, and other disturbing behaviors. Kamala is the darling of Silicon Valley, she is their choice.
Biden will not last long, and Harris becomes president, and elections with integrity in America will be a thing of the past. Too many vested interests all all so coincidentally playing their parts in a coup. Politics are quite illuminating, power seems to be the only concern with all, but unlike in the past, those gaining power are willing to escalate to new frontiers.
All very well and good. The adage given to any who war-games is “the enemy gets a vote”. My guess, and I very much hope to be wrong, is that it will be action by China, Russia, Iran, North Korea or even a non-state actor that throws things into a state of chaos Americans have not seen in living memory. When they demand clear, steady and confident leadership, they will get precious little of that from the current crew propping up Biden. What is far from clear is how that plays out given all the legal technicalities discussed above.
At the same time, if the GOP controls congress, same odds. They will either force Kamala to resign and then appoint a VP to take over, or they will let her have the office and put a GOP VP in.
That’s not how it works. First a GOP majority even in both Houses of Congress can’t force Kamala to resign. If Biden resigns as President, Kamala becomes President by the direct effect of Section 1 of the 25th Amendment. No Congressional action is necessary.
She can then only be removed by conviction on impeachment, removal against her will under the 25th Amendment which requires two thirds votes in both chambers of Congress (ie it’s harder than removal by impeachment) or death. Which route are you expecting a GOP majority to take ?
As for imposing a GOP VP on her, a new VP requires nomination by the President and confirmation by a majority of each House of Congress – ie the President can’t impose a new VP on Congress and Congress can’t impose a new VP on the President. So they would have to agree on someone as a matter of politics. In practice it’s hard to see why a GOP majority would prefer anyone to no one, since with no VP the next in line would be the Speaker, who on the assumption of GOP control would be a Republican.
I’ll say 12%.
An average man his age has about a 4-5% chance of dying annually, but he’s got far better care and is in noticeably better health than the typical 78 year old, so call it 3% per year. That’s about 5% between now and the end of 2022.
There have been four assassinations in 232 years, which works out to about a 3% chance in that period of time. But Presidential security is better now, and Biden is relatively unobjectionable as Presidents go, so it’ll be lower, even in these more-tumultuous-than-most times. Call it 2% here.
The last 5% is the soft stuff, such as dementia, that leads to resignation. I know this will be a much lower estimate than most here, but I think it’s plausible.
– For one, dementia comes on pretty slowly – the idea that he could be doing town halls now (even with the occasional “senior moment”) and yet be so bad that he needs to resign within two years, is hard to credit.
– For two, the claims that he’s losing it seem overblown to me – I don’t think he forgot the name of the Pentagon in the one video I saw, I think he was just being folksy. It felt like his usual style, not like an illness, at least to my eyes.
– And for three, if we’re going for maximal cynicism, the magic date is January 21, 2023 – if he makes it that far, Harris can be elected to two terms of her own. But since you set the cutoff at the end of 2022, the cynical mindset says that he’ll get past that mark(if only just).
Agree. This has been Biden’s style for decades. He’s never been the sharpest stick in the bundle. If they’re keeping him under wraps, I doubt it has to do with mental health – it’s just that Joe has always been Mr. Malaprop.
If Biden ever had a motto, it would have been “oh, that’s just Joe being Joe.”
Given that if he can make it through the second year of his term, Harris can take over and still serve two more full terms (for a 10 year total), I would expect they’ll prop his zombie ass up, ‘Weekend at Bernies’ style.
If he’s not out by the end of the year that’s probably the plan.
And it’ll give them a couple years to clear the field of competitors – like the piranhas are already doing with Cuomo – to give her the best shot possible in 2024.
Thread winner.
As others have said, they’ll try and keep him in office till some time after his first 2 years is up.
Then they won’t use the 25th Amendment, that’s too public and will lead to lots of discussion.
The discussion would be to what extent his unfitness was known BEFORE the powerful people moved to replace him.
After the 2 years he will be visited by the US equivalent of the the UK Conservatives ‘men in grey suits’.
They will ‘invite’ him to stand down, and the resignation statement will be written to make it look like Biden’s own considered and patriotic decision. That’s important, it will be made to look like Biden’s decision to resign, not that he is being forced out.
Another interesting factor is when this will be done. If it’s done very soon after the 2 years is up he will speak in favour of Harris. The longer he is kept in office the more chance that his departure address will praise the opportunity of using the democratic process to pick a candidate for 2024.
At the moment we cannot know the relative chances of each of these because we don’t know what the truly powerful establishment members really think about Harris.
Throughout this process the MSM will publish what suits them, whether that is true or not.
The democrats have pretty much priced they can install anyone they choose as POTUS and VP irrespective of negligible talent, likability or widespread voter appeal. The chosen two just need to toe the line.
I don’t see any reason why Kamala shouldn’t be the candidate in 2024. After all look at the hapless competition out there. Hilary may still hold her delusions but that’s about it. The optics of prematurely replacing a woman of colour would be troublesome anyway.
As for machinations to ensure a 9.99 year term for Pres Harris I just don’t see it. She’s not even the best of a bad bunch, she’s the box-ticking token who will do what she’s told but brings little else to the table. Once her time is up anyone will do for them.
Finally the Dems current playbook is to push the agenda in private I.e. with zero media scrutiny while publicly blaming current and future woes on Trump and COVID (Trump wherever possible). That playbook can easily run for a year or two and only at that time will Plan B, ditch Joe, take plan.
Never mind about Biden. When are the Tories going to replace Boris Johnson and that fascist Mat Hancock?
Bobby b writes: My guess: Harris was acceptable as the VP partially because she had such dismal support in her quest for the presidency.
Yes, I think that is exactly right.
APL, the Tories aren’t going to replace BloJob for a while, I am afraid. They see him as a sort of Disraeli: a bit of an unprincipled bounder, a chaser of women and all that, but also quite lucky in certain respects, with a kind of “Nelson touch” in boldly going for an option and it working out. They remember his role in Brexit, getting the vaccines early, and so on. Distrust and dislike the man, but don’t write him off.
As for Hancock, he’s basically a mediocre estate agent who got into office. He isn’t Beria. (That’s for the Sovietologists on this thread.)
Anyway, we can discuss the UK another time.
Why would the Democrats want to replace Biden?
Right now, they can pull the strings behind him, with total deniability. Everything that goes wrong will be Biden’s fault, not theirs.
Death might be an issue, but there’s alwayus the El Cid approach: after Hilary’s residence, the White House must have plenty of broomsticks.
Here’s my dream scenario.
Per 25A, Biden can’t be removed against his will solely because the Democrats want him gone. It takes a 2/3 majority of House and Senate.
He will never go willingly – or rather, his posse will never let him go willingly. He won’t go of his own accord (Section 3) and he’ll resist an attempt by the Harris wing to remove him (Section 4). That presumes that she can even muster the necessary cabinet support to start the Section 4 process. She has scant popularity in her own party, and remember, at this point, it’s not about what the voters think – their opinions don’t matter in this process.
So, let’s say, the Democrats in the House and Senate go to him and say ‘Joe, it’s time to go. Go quietly, using Section 3.’ Remember, he’s not a babbling idiot yet – he can still be seen in public, he can still do a fairly good imitation of being effective. He could coast along like this for years. He – and his posse – and DOCTOR Biden – say, in unison – Hell, no, we like the power we have. We’re hanging onto it.
Let’s say, then, that Harris can muster enough Cabinet support to invoke Section 4. They send their petition to the Congress, but then the Biden regime send in their rebuttal, and so it goes back to the Congress for a vote.
At that point – here’s the Corleone stroke – the Republicans say – no – we won’t vote for removal. Without our votes, you get to keep your President Biden for the full 4 years. He’s a rotten President, because he’s functioning at such a low level, but this is what you created so now you have to live with it. If Harris wants to be President, then she has to run for office and persuade the voters, just like anybody else. Good luck with that. But the Democrats kind-of have to run her as their candidate, or be seen to very-publicly dump a Black woman candidate in favour of another old white man. Meanwhile, we get to have 2 or 3 more years of ‘Joe just being Joe’, all of which improves the chances of electing a Republican at the next regularly-scheduled election. The Democrats have a huge and ongoing internal schism, because some of them tried to unship the President and failed. If you strike at the King, you must strike him down. For the Republicans, it’s nothing but upside.
Of course, Joe could have an unfortunate fishing accident – but that doesn’t much change the end-game, plus, the optics of such an event would be open to some epic reporting. The Democrats still end up with President Harris, a deeply-unqualified ideologue who couldn’t get elected dog-catcher by her own party, but with whom they kind-of have to stick for the next election.
Before the election, Joe Biden was the worst possible outcome. After the election, Joe Biden is the best possible outcome. Embrace the mediocrity, it’s the necessary pill we have to swallow to get back to some form of sanity.
llater,
llamas
Death might be an issue, but there’s alwayus the El Cid approach: after Hilary’s residence, the White House must have plenty of broomsticks.
That was genuinely funny. LOL moment here in deepest London!!!
llamas, though your “dream scenario” has a certain dark attraction for me, I refer you to the comment made by Roll-aid at 2:21 am: The adage given to any who war-games is “the enemy gets a vote”.
In terms of US politics alone, forcing the Democrats to be publicly responsible for having put someone they must have known was fading mentally into the role of president, would teach some good lessons. I have often pointed out on other forums that Belgium went for 541 days without a government in 2010-11 with no ill effects, almost as if governments were not necessary for societies to keep going. But even I have to admit that what Belgium can get away with snuggled up in the heart of Western Europe of the early twenty-first century, peaceful almost to the point of sloth, is very different from the position of the United States of America. The lack of a functioning leader was harmless or beneficial for Belgium a decade ago but might have the same effect as letting your blood drip into the water when sharks are around for the US now.
I agree with Douglas2 and Phelps, though I am probably more cynical or realistic (take your pick).
Dems will do whatever it takes to make him last until Jan 22, 2023. They’ll stuff him, mount him and animatronic him if necessary.
He’ll never make 4 years.
All Hail Kamala!!!
Yes Mr Biden will be replaced within a year – nothing sinister needs to be done (I do not think they will murder him or anything like that) he will just retire for health reasons – his wife will “suggest” to him, there will not even be a formal need to invoke the 25th Amendment.
Mr Biden is a criminal, he has a long record of corruption going back many years, but as he is senile he can not stand trial – and the FBI and “Justice” Department have become more and more corrupt since January 20th 1993 (when William Jefferson Clinton took over as President) and are now a vicious Clown Show, like most other government institutions. At the same time despotic, incompetent, and institutionally (culturally) corrupt. Even if Mr Biden was not senile he would not be charged for his crimes – so there is nothing for his family to fear by him leaving office.
As for the corrupt FBI – I recently watched the Director of the FBI deny (on oath – before Congress) that there was any Antifa involvement in the events of January 6th – he was LYING, as I have personally seen the film of Antifa members (dressed in the black Antifa “uniform”) attacking a door on the Capitol building till pulled away by Trump supporters (not the police – Trump supporters) chanting “F Antifa”. There is also film of members of an Antifa offshoot (not in uniform) inside the Capitol building urging people on – one of these people was paid thousands of Dollars by CNN and another was a CNN employee.
So “no evidence of involvement by Antifa” – thank you very much Mr Direction, you lying corrupt scum.
Almost needless to say – the courts are no better.
A recent article in the Federalist showed some of the evidence of vast Election Rigging in the 2020 election – which the courts refused even to LOOK AT.
“We not want to live in the past Paul”.
O.K. then – but what about HR1, supported by the Economist magazine and the rest of the “liberal” world establishment, which institutionalise Election Rigging in every FUTURE election in every State.
Unlimited mail-in ballots (produced at any time – weeks before the election, after the other votes are in, does-not-matter) with no real citizenship of identity checks.
No other country in the world has an election system such as that HR1 outlines – it would be considered unacceptably corrupt in other nation.
But according the “liberal” international elite such a voting system (which would mean it would be utterly pointless for the Republicans to even put up candidates), would be fine for the United States.
The “it is just Trump – if we let the establishment get rid of him, everything will go back to normal” line is looking rather thread bare.
President K. Harris is not the sort of person who would allow free and fair elections.
The Corporations are already preparing the world for President K. Harris.
Forbes put out flattering stuff about her on Twitter.
The supermarkets are careful to push a flattering biography of K. Harris (with all her corruption carefully NOT covered). I noticed years ago that the book shops and supermarkets (at least in Britain) publish pro President books when the President is a Democrat, and anti President books when the President is a Republican – regardless of sales (they do not give a damn about sales – only about showing how “Progressive” they are, sadly the Corporations could not care less about long term share holder value, Milton Friedman was mistaken).
The Marxist background of K. Harris is matched only by her corruption – which includes not just financial corruption, but also framing innocent people for crimes they did not commit, and letting the guilty go free (the Federal “Justice” Department loves that – to persecute the innocent and cover up the crimes of the guilty is, essentially, their standard procedure) – including people who had sexually abused children (oh dear that “conspiracy theory” – except that is what K. Harris did).
K. Harris a paragon of vice – political (her Marxism – taking after her father) and personal (her general corruption and despicable conduct), IDEAL as a President for the America the establishment elite are creating.
Perhaps the election system will not be even more rigged than it is now (perhaps HR1 will die in the Senate), but with the leftist control of the education system and the media (any dissent and you are a RACIST, SEXIST, HOMOPHOBE, TRANSPHOBE, ISLAMOPHOBE who must be destroyed) formal large scale Election Rigging may not even be needed.
Economic Collapse?
Certainly it will happen – but it may not save civilisation (odd to think of economic collapse SAVING civilisation in the first place) – remember the “Curley Effect”.
Democrat Mayor Curley created (deliberately CREATED – by driving out business enterprises) a lot of poverty in Boston over a century ago – and his popularity went UP. His popularity went UP because people were desperate and he offered them bread and soup (and the expense of other people – of course).
I sometimes think that that the Democrats are still more inspired by Mayor Curley (and other scum – for that is what he was, scum totally corrupt and despicable) than they are by Karl Marx.
President K. Harris is the embodiment of both – the doctrines of Karl Marx, and the personal corruption of Mayor Curley.
And SUPPORTED by most big Corporations and billionaires.
The “capitalists” are supporting the destruction of “capitalism” in the United States, it is hard to know whether to cry or laugh.
Perhaps one can do both.
Only a few years ago I was shocked that Nike backed Colin Kaepernick.
Here was an open Marxist, a supporter of the Castro regime and so on, being supported by a “capitalist” Corporation – and he did not have the excuse of poverty and “racism”, as he was born into comfort (the sort of comfort that I have never had) and had been given everything in life, by the United States of America he openly hated-despised-and-wished-to-destroy.
I liked Nike – I liked the story of Mr Knight building up the business from nothing, I was that innocent, that dumb.
I did not understand what utter filth the Corporations have become.
But I have learned – their support for people such as President K. Harris does not shock me now.
On mewe (and on the bork of feces) I have seen various threads in the last few months where people predict Biden will resign (or be resigned…) in the relatively near future. My personal date preference is July 4 but that’s based on a theory that the Dems will go for some kind of symbolism than anything else.
Late last year people thought he’d hang on until late Jan 2022 so that Commie La Whoreish would be able to run two more times as POTUS, but the more we (don’t) see him the more it looks like he won’t make it that long. A ton of people who have experience of dealing with dementia sufferers, such as hospice/LTC nurses, people with elderly parents etc. say that he is exhibiting many of the symptoms of dementia and in fact is fairly far down the path. My own experience with my father and the experience of others is that once you’re on the decline at this level it speeds up so I think it is likely that he will be unable to string together a speech in public even with a teleprompter in a month or two.
As the US election was stolen (any number of sources have shown strange, unrealistic patterns and sudden reversals) then it hardly matters about Biden. If you can appoint someone to be front runner via committee (Hillary pushing aside Sanders in 2016 is an indication of how that works), then swing an election with obvious fraud and with it suppress, or sweet-talk, the media into looking elsewhere to avoid the elephant in the room, then the matter of who is ‘president’ is an amusing aside.
The Dems want power forever, and the matter of whether the top man is up to the job is immaterial. They will engineer someone to take the place of whoever they want, when it suits them.
In short, nothing to do with the people any more. Voting has now been shown to be a pointless exercise so any opinions on who should or shouldn’t lead the US is neither here nor there.
Dementia comes in multiple forms, and depending on the form you can see very rapid degeneration of function. My father suffered from aphasia, which is a gradual loss of vocabulary. As he was a man with a very large vocabulary, for some time the only practical effect was pauses in the conversation as he struggled to pull up a functional synonym for the word he had lost. But once the holes got too big, there were just too many things he couldn’t say and conversation became more or less impossible. He went from reasonably functional, if obviously impaired, to completely uncommunicative in less than a year. He was getting cutting edge treatment at the time (2009). Not knowing anything about Biden’s actual state, how close he is to a potential tipping point isn’t something I would care to project, but don’t be shocked if he starts to decline rapidly. It’s pretty clear that Biden has been declining for at least year, and he wasn’t exactly spending a ton of time in public during the early Trump years, so who knows when the more subtle early signs really started.
One of the tragic aspects of dementia is that the mind goes long before the body fails. My father was physically fine (which meant he had to be watched, lest he suddenly disappear on a walk), and would probably have lived quite a while in this state if he hadn’t died of prostate cancer a few months after he stopped talking. So think the chances of Biden actually dying before 2025 are pretty low. But I would be surprised if he was still able to function as a politician in public by then. 2023 is less of a stretch, and given the political incentives to cover for him I wouldn’t put the chances of him stepping down in some way before then any higher than 25%.
It’s obvious from the exposure that Harris is getting that it is much more likely than normal that she will find herself at least acting-President. The fact that this has started almost immediately is also clear that the potential for it to happen sooner rather than later is real.
Re read your copies of The Prince. If something distasteful must be done, it is best done quickly. Undoing everything Trump did, down to the last detail, is distasteful, at least to the public, so it’s being done by a shadowy “Central Committee” writing E.O’s, whose membership is subject to some speculation. Once the Trump legacy has been completely cancelled, then the sock puppet can be removed, the Commie will seem to be an improvement, and the peasants will love her. If HR1 gets passed, the Dems need never worry about losing another election ever again, the public be damned. What do they know about running a country anyway.
There is virtually no chance of Biden staying in office through 2022. Biden will do as he is told while he is “president”, including resigning when he is told to resign. He’ll be told to resign when it is more trouble than it is worth trying to cover for him. which shouldn’t take long. He was dumber than a bag of hammers before he started going senile, and he started going senile before he became vice-president.
Biden will be given the Scalia treatment, as soon as it suits. Then the next Emperor will be appointed.
I agree they want him to last two years, but the strongest motivation isn’t getting Kamala an extra election as an incumbent, it’s maintaining control of thr Senate.
If Kamala becomes President she is no longer Vice President and can no longer break ties in the Senate. A new VP can be appointed, but that needs the approval of Republicans in a now 50-50 Senate, so is unlikely to happen. The line of succession is still intact with Pelosi being next in line and others after her, so they *should* be able to resist calls to approve a new VP as their duty to the country.
Now all of a sudden, instead of needing to overcome a filibuster or persuade the marginal Democratic senator most opposed to a bill (probably Manchin or Sinema, but whoever) they need to get at least one Republican on board. Now it’s hardly unprecedented for Republicans to cross over and vote for a Democratic bill, but it’s going to have to be something palatble to the Senator and to a certain extent party. Maybe a pork loaded infrastructure bill, maybe increasing benefits to a shared constuency like parents, maybe even something more radical like legalizing marijuana or criminal justice reform*. But no more trillion dollar give aways to dem special interests. No rewriting election law. No judges or other nominees approved without Republican approval (Presumably not zero approved, but much more difficult and can’t nominate the most extreme candidates, especially for the Supreme Court.) No universal healthcare or green new deal. No ending the filibuster so you only need to get one Republican on board.
Compared to that, preserving Kamala’s eligibility for an extra election is a nice to have, but not vital. Heck, she herself *probably* wants to wait two years and a day, but given the vagaries of elections, might want to take the bird in the hand and assume office as soon as possible.
As long as the Senate is 50-50, everyone who benefits from Democrats being in power benefits enormously from Biden being in office, even taking into consideration infighting and bad publicity from public stumbles or from hiding him. The return on the exercize of the raw power of the Presidency and both houses is just that large. To remove him they would have to believe that not doing so would turn a signifcant fraction of even their own supporters and all the rest of the voters, against them, costing them big losses at the next election. For that to happen be would need to be so bad he can’t read a teleprompter, and I don’t mean. stumbling over words, but just going off the rails. He’s not nearly there yet, and I don’t know how fast his decline will be, but mental decline is often – but of course not always – slow, so I’d give him above even odds of making it to two years.
If the balance of the Senate changes, whether through election or (hopefully not) illlnes or death – favoring either party – then Biden becomes much more disposable. They would stil want to keep him for two years, but the incentive is much weaker, and if polling shows enough people think he needs to go, he’ll go. I can’t predict my fellow Americans, but probably making enough mistakes off a teleprompter that moderate partisans can’t pass them off as stumbles, or no public speaking (even with teleprompter and no questions) for months would probably do it, with those lesser incentives.
*Not saying these are especially likely, just that they’re examples of things that could get bipartisan support.
As a sidenote, if by chance the Senate is 50-50 again after the next election, and the Democrats still control the House there’s still going to be a lot of incentive to keep him in.
Since Kamala will *probably* want to finally take power even at the cost of their majority, and since she can probably leak evidence of Dementia or even just make a public speech about it *and* can be uncooperative with bills pushed by those who cross her and punish those who cross her when she eventually becomes President anyway, they’ll probably get rid of him then, though presumably after passing some remaining legislstion that they were waiting for after the elections to pass (assuming they didn’t already pass everything they could push through anyway.)
Another possibilty would be if Republicans took the House and kept 50 or more in the Senate. Then all of a sudden, If Kamala becomes President a Repubklican is next in line.
Presumably Kamala wouldn’t be super worried about who takes over if she dies (or even less likely) is removed from office, and while others might worry, unless Republicans also win enough Senate seats to remove her after impeachement (vanishingly unlikely) the chances of a Republican becoming the first Speaker to become acting president are low enough that Congress and the cabinet would just go along, if that was what Kamala wanted.
As long as the Senate is 50-50
It’s worth remembering that although the Senate is 50-50 now, that doesn’t mean it will be 50-50 until 3 January 2023. Senators are generally quite old. And different States have different rules for vacancies, and where the Governor appoints a replacement not all Governors are of the same party as each Senator from that State. Assume just for amusement 100 senators, each of whom has a 2% chance of dying before 3 Jan 2023. What are the odds they are all still alive on 3 Jan 2023 ? Only about one in seven.
All of which means that it’s quite likely that before 3 January 2023, one side or the other might have a majority.
I think y’all are seeing Harris in the wrong light.
She was chosen as VP specifically because she has no power base, no power, no constituency, and so doesn’t have to figure into anyone’s plans. She is no threat to the people who see themselves as waiting in the Dem wings.
Biden has always wanted to be Prez. He’s thrown his hat into that ring innumerable times, and has always self-destructed out. He finally got in – he finally got the backing of the Dem powers – by agreeing to be a bare figurehead and agreeing to follow his handlers’ directions. But I doubt that extends to resigning on request. The man’s mind has never been keen, but his ego has always been overwhelming.
Harris is there because she won’t interfere with the great Dem scramble that will ensue in 2024. She was the price for their acceptance of Biden this time – many Dem candidates don’t want anyone wearing the incumbent mantle in 2024, and Harris is that No One.
(And why can’t we simply see vid montages of Biden reading off of scripts for the next four years? If there is recognition that he’s being led by his Politburo, and the Politburo seems to perform rather ruthlessly, there’s no excess danger of foreign adventurism just because he’s feeble. So long as he is still alive, he can be Prez, feeble or not.)
Several posters have referred to the current 50:50 senate as a factor which, in certain circumstances, might make the Democrats prefer to keep Harris as VP.
Bestowing statehood on DC and Puerto Rico would provide an extra 4 Democrat senators (plus a few extra congressmen).
Unless I’m mistaken all they have to do is use the VP’s casting vote to dispense with the Senate filibuster and then with Congress and the White House onside it happens, Joe Manchin isn’t going to break ranks.
The wonderful Devin Nunes, a Californian Congressman (and 7/8ths Portuguese-American) regards this as Obama’s third term, he notes that unusually Obama remained in DC after leaving office, bid(en)ing his time.
Rats’ 2020 Big Steal was part-and-parcel of a Gramscian coup d’oeuvre (“artful subversion” over time) dating from Joe Kennedy’s 1960 gangland hijacking of Illinois and West Virginia.
Given this treasonous Sovereign Crime, posting over 25 million fabricated-fraudulent ballots from thin air, as of last January 20th the American Republic ceased to be a representative democracy. Actively colluding, Congress and its academic/media organs betrayed their trust; careerist Courts and judges refused even to hear evidence; corrupt State Legislators merely ratified their original Leninist intent.
As Charles Dickens recognized in 1858: “The American elite is almost beyond redemption. … Moral relativism has set in so deeply that the gilded classes have become incapable of discerning right from wrong. Everything can be explained away, especially by journalists. Life is one great moral mush– sophistry washed down with Chardonnay. Ordinary citizens, thank goodness, still adhere to absolutes. … It is they who have saved the Republic from creeping degradation while their ‘betters’ were derelict.”
Alas for Enlightenment principle, over two generations “ordinary citizens” have devolved to willfully pork-ignorant, neutered ciphers, no more capable of taking action than of realizing their condition. “Good men did nothing”, and Le Deluge washes all away.
I wish they’d hurry up and get on with it so that we can get to the “Après le déluge” bit of swamp clearance, hanging the guilty and construction of a new Republic.
+1.
“Let us ignore the issue of the Rigging of the 2020 election” – O.K. then.
Senator Mike Lee of Utah has presented a Bill that would bring the Federal “Justice” system under the principles of the Common Law, for example the Common Law principle of criminal intent (guilty mind).
Is it not an outrage that the FBI and the Federal “Justice” system is NOT under the principles of the Common Law Jonathan Pearce? And they clearly are not under the principles of the Common Law – you do not need to go ask Senator Mike Lee about it, you can ask Mr Ed (if you do not believe me).
The basic principles of the Common Law are violated by the FBI and the Federal “Justice” system as a matter of law and policy – it is NOT just a few rotten apples, it is the LAW and the SYSTEM that go against the basic principles of the Common Law.
Now I am not saying that the systems of police and law in the 50 States go against the basic principles of the Common Law (I do not know – there would have to 50 different studies), but the Federal system does – overwhelmingly, it is despicable.
“Do not worry Paul – they only use their powers to persecute the innocent and cover up the crimes of the guilty when there is a POLITICAL angle, they do not do this NORMALLY”.
Oh that is O.K. then.
The Feds will only fit-you-up if they dislike you politically – and they will only cover up the crimes of real criminals if they agree with them politically.
Silly me for being upset about that.
President K. Harris is very much from this world.
The idea that she would tolerate free and fair elections is absurd – after all she would LOSE, if she allowed fair and free elections.
“You do not want another 2016 do you? We need to guide elections – for the good of the people who are too uneducated to be left to decide these things for themselves”.
It was never really just about Donald John Trump – it is about creating a new political systerm.
Remember Augustus never got rid of elections Rome.
The elections continued (I think they formally continued right till the Emperor Justinian got rid of such positions as “Consul” and so on – some six CENTURIES later, I doubt that the United States under people such as K. Harris will last a dozen years, let alone centuries).
Everyone knew in advance what the RESULTS of the elections would be in advance – for every position.
But the rituals continued – and I am sure that President K. Harris will carry on with the ritual of elections. Just as the rituals of a “legal system” and “trials” will continue – indeed there will be lots and lots of trials, especially of conservatives – who are being redefined as “terrorists” and “insurrectionists”. And will be forced to testify against each other (“do this or we come for family members – remember under our vague laws EVERYONE is guilty of something”).
So everything is fine – nothing to see here people, move along.
Essentially K. Harris is already President – but NO the Republicans would not block her from appointing a new Vice President if she formally becomes President (which she will – within a year).
If anyone thinks that “Mitt” Romney and co will stand up and fight, well then you have not really been paying attention.
As for Mr Biden – people keep saying he is a moderate, which means they have not even looked at his Senate voting record – he is NOT a moderate.
But it would not matter if he had been a moderate (which he was NOT), as he is a senile puppet under the control of the Collectivists.
Again, people who do not understand this need to wake up and pay attention.
Although I think it is already too late.
The chances of, for example, a Convention of States to get the Federal Government under control (ABOLISH the institutionally corrupt FBI and so on – clue any agency that Hollywood and the television shows love, is rotten to the core, the real “Mulder and Scully” are not interested in bleeping space aliens, they are interested in fitting-up the innocent and covering up the crimes of the guilty) is essentially ZERO.
There is not going to be a Convention of States (although I would love to see it), the institutionally corrupt Federal Government is not going to be rolled back.
Liberty has already lost – unless there is some factor I have failed to see. That is certainly possible, and I hope I am mistaken.
The young will find out in the elections of 2022 and 2224.
It is an empirical question – if real Republicans are allowed to win (not fake ones who go along with the corrupt system – the vicious scum of the FBI, and so on), then I was mistaken – GOOD! I hope I am mistaken.
But do not underestimate the power of brainwashing (conditioning) – for example all those television shows and endless Hollywood films over most of the last CENTURY.
You were shocked that I used words such as “vicious scum” in relation to the FBI were you not gentle reader? Even though that is exactly what they are. They LIE (including on oath – to Congress and to the courts) and they cheat, and they persecute the innocent and cover up the real crimes of the guilty.
You were shocked because of ENDLESS films and television shows that present the FBI as the good guys. They are not good guys – but you have been at least partly conditioned to think they are.
Propaganda works – otherwise the television and film companies would not engage in it at such vast expense over so many years.
Perhaps they really were Good Guys once – perhaps as recently as 1992 (before the Clintons came in and corrupted the Justice system – although it was going bad for many years BEFORE the Clintons with “RICO” laws and so on), but they are most certainly not Good Guys now.
It will be very hard to have a free and fair elections in the future – not with the FBI and the “Justice” Department working to prevent them. Yes PREVENT them – they are not the “Good Guys”, they are the “Bad Guys”.
Increasingly dissenters will be “fitted up” with false charges – and made to testify against each other (with threats to their families and so on).
And elections may be formally rigged – with obscenities such as HR1.
I remind you Johnathan Pearce the Economist magazine did not denounce HR1 – it supported it.
The international “liberal” establishment support RIGGING every future election with fake mail-in ballots and no real identity and citizenship checks.
It was never really about Donald John Trump – it was about creating a totalitarian system.
President Trump was just in the way (and he never really understood just how bad things were – hence his endless waiting for the “Durham Report” as if John Durham was ever really going to smash the corrupt system) – and he is not in the way any more. So the totalitarian system can now be constructed – unless it is somehow prevented.
We shall have to see if totalitarianism is prevented – and President K. Harris and the accursed Federal “Justice” system consigned to the void.
Like Natalie, I too am intrigued by llamas’ ‘dream scenario’. But i do not know enough about the Constitution to judge whether it is realistic; i.e. i am not sure about avenues open to Democrats who want to remove Biden.
As i said when the election was still being challenged: fraud must be investigated, but there is time for that. Meanwhile, it is better if Joe Biden becomes POTUS, because it will result in a public humiliation for everybody who has to pretend that he is not demented. Beginning with Boris.
Meanwhile, Biden’s first press conference has been scheduled. I won’t watch it live, but am eager to read about it.
Exit question: even if the press conference goes ‘well’, how many years do you think that a POTUS can go without talking to any foreign leader?
Snorri : Like Natalie, I too am intrigued by llamas’ ‘dream scenario’. But i do not know enough about the Constitution to judge whether it is realistic; i.e. i am not sure about avenues open to Democrats who want to remove Biden.
I think llamas’s dream scenario is legally correct – ie if Joe is removed by a 25th Amendment coup by his Cabinet, but doesn’t want to go and says “I’m fine” then he automatically resumes his powers as President unless there’s a two thirds vote in both House and Senate to say he’s incapable. Other removal methods include resignation, death or conviction on impeachment. Resignation is much the most likely, but it isn’t available if he adamantly refuses. (Unless they slip the paper in front of him and ask him to sign it claiming it’s the check for lunch. Though even that might be a struggle as he probably hasn’t paid for his own lunch since the 1970s, and may no longer be familiar with the concept.)
But I don’t think llamas’ scheme makes sense politically. The Dems would just say he was fine when elected but now he’s deteriorated. 200,000 TV doctors would agree. Also the White House staff would have all the evidence of the drooling. So if the Rs blocked his removal, they’d be the ones owning a dementia-incapable President.
Natalie : almost as if governments were not necessary for societies to keep going.
Belgium survived without an elected government. The civil servants carried on as usual. Sir Humphrey and the Swamp represent the proposition that the elected guys are mostly decorative anyway. In the US, for example, even with an elected Trump, the nomenklatura managed to delay the census process so that it gets finalised by Biden rather than by Trump. Belgium just temporarily dispensed with the decoration.
That is why it doesn’t matter if Joe is not all, or even any, there. The elected guy is only relevant if he is trying to prevent the Swamp doing what it wants. Usually he isn’t. Trump tried to go his own way but was mostly unsuccessful. One of the more interesting things that has slowly dribbled out of the first impeachment fun and games is that the real “whistleblower” Lt Col Vindman was animated not so much by a loyalty to Biden and the Dems but by absolute fury that Trump, in his phone call, was “going against US foreign policy” – which Vindman firmly and passionately believed was made by the “Interagency” ie the nomenklatura. Not the President.
Tracy C Coyle- Want to bet?
Lee Moore:
I think so too — but am wary of loopholes.
They don’t have to claim it’s the check for lunch. They just have to say: sign this.
They probably do it every day, already.
The Rs could say:
Prove it! Prove that he is worse now than he was before the election!
They might or might not have the guts to do so.
The Rs could say:
Prove it! Prove that he is worse now than he was before the election!
So what ? They’ve proved that the meh Russia thing was a Hillary fabrication, but half the US population still believes it. And that was just with the conventional media operating. Any new stuff the Rs have to prove needs to get past Facebook and Twitter too. Good luck with that.
No! I wrote that the Rs should shift the burden of the proof on the Ds if the latter want to get rid of Biden!!
Snorri Godhi has the exact right way of looking at my ‘dream scenario’ – force the Democrats to stab their own leader in the back, in broad daylight. The man who, up until 20 minutes before, was being universally hailed as a light-bringer genius and god-like eminence of global wisdom. The Republicans simply have to say ‘We’re not going to use Constitutional skullduggery to undo the results of an election simply because the Democrats are now unhappy with their own choices. This is the man they sold you as the saviour of the Union, all questions of his mental fitness have been waved away for years as being the relics of a childhood stutter, and we don’t accept that he’s any worse now than he was when he was elected. If you want to be rid of him, don’t expect us to help you.’ And then sit on their hands.
There’s some obviously-doctored videos of Biden ‘answering’ extempore questions for the press floating around. He’s supposed to have a ‘press conference’ a week from today. I suspect it will not compare well with the kind of lively interactions that were President Trump’s stock-in-trade. He’s obviously in serious decline, and he wasn’t much to write home about before the election. The sooner he becomes intolerable to the Democrats, the better – the shorter the period from ‘elect our genius light-bringer’ to ‘he’s unfit to serve’, the more-obvious the fraud to even the meanest intelligence. And the Republicans don’t have to lift a finger to make it happen.
Natalie Solent of this parish reminded me, very-perceptively, of the old adage that ‘in combat, the enemy gets a vote’, and the point is well-taken. But there is another adage in war that says ‘never distract the enemy when he is busy making a mistake’ and the mistake of pushing this blithering fool is now coming home to roost. There’s half-a-hundred policies and decisions already made, from the border, to the military, to the obsession with the wildest extremes of ‘woke’ culture, that are causing voters to sit up and say ‘Whaaat, wait a minute, this isn’t what we were promised!’ This is a fine time to heed the uncommon advice that says ‘Don’t just do something – Stand there!’. President Obama is famously-said to have observed that one should never underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up, and here’s a perfect opportunity to let him do, what he does best.
Maybe I’m wrong. But I think it’s the best path to take, right now. It’s what Michael would have done. ‘You can have my answer now, if you like. My offer is this – Nothing.’ Let them dig their own graves, just as Senator Geary did. Let’s not forget that, once the facade of Biden’s fitness starts to seriously-crack, the media will be on it like white on rice, and the story will cascade – they won’t be able to help themselves, no matter their own political preferences. He’ll go from political superman to pudding-slobbering halfwit in weeks. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy (\sarc\)
llater,
llamas
The one problem with Llamas’ scenario is that it requires the Republicans to be intelligent. With idiots like Mitt Romney claiming Trump and the Jan. 6 protests were the most distasteful thing he’d seen — even after Biden literally accused him in 2012 of wanting to put black people in chains — that’s not so certain.
I’m afraid I don’t get how even intelligent Republicans are to shift the burden of proof. Just saying it doesn’t make it happen. 99% of what the public hears will be coming from the Democrats and the media (I repeat myself.) The Rs could say all sorts of sensible things (OK it’s a hypothetical). No one’s going to hear them.
In any event as Ted says, the Rs aren’t solid. At least half of the R Senators want to cave to any pressure, and only refrain from doing so more often from fear of their primarly electorate. But Romney thinks he’s King of Utah and unassailable, Murkowski’s already overturned a primary defeat by relying on Ds to elect her, and folk like Portman and Toomey aren’t running again. If the Rs attempted llamas’s plan, there would be at least half a dozen R Senators going to the press and saying “this is very irresponsible, even Trumpist.”
Quite right.
However, there is a much better chance of that now than there was 4 years ago.
Lee Moore still doesn’t get it :}
In today’s America, to be heard, you must say things that defy common sense. Avoid saying ‘sensible’ things at all costs.
What mistake? The Dems are perfectly happy with how their actions have turned out. They have an ineffectual figurehead announcing, under his own name, their ultra-prog policies. We can sit here all day talking happily about how his declining mental state proves our point and makes our case, but 50% (ok, 49%) of the population simply doesn’t care about that.
They didn’t elect Joe Biden. They unelected Trump. They unelected Trump’s philosophies and policies. And they’re presently getting the anti-Trump. They don’t give a damn which face issues the proclamations – they’re just happy to see them issued. And no more mean tweets!
We’re not fighting a man here. We’re fighting an uninformed populace which thinks “to each according to xir needs” is just . . . nice. Compassionate. Fair.
If I didn’t have kids in the mix, I’d probably be saying, so let them have it. I have no doubt that I – and most of the people here – can do quite well under any system. So let the vast idiocy experience how well THEY do under this new one. It may well be the only way.
Welcome to 1917.
In today’s America, to be heard, you must say things that defy common sense.
Ancient history. That was Trump’s tactic to bypass the MSM firewall. Say things on Twitter so outrageous that they have to cover it – if only by way of faux outrage. But they’ve got wise to that. The muzzle has been extended to Twitter and Facebook etc, so the only platforms for Wrongthink are tiny little places like Samizdata. For which the woke internet utility service companies will be coming once they’ve dealt with bigger – but still very small – heretic fish.
Putin gets it.
The hard left is mostly in control of the Democrat Party now.
The hard left would mostly rather “see” Kamala Harris as POTUS instead of Biden, but the hard left also probably realize that they can get more of their agenda done with POTUS Biden instead of POTUS Harris because Biden is old and white and historically a traditional, quite moderate Democrat with a reputation for centrism.
I don’t know if Kamala Harris will replace Biden as POTUS before Biden’s term is up. I don’t think it really makes much of a difference.
Furthermore, even if half (or even more) of the woke Dem sheep suddenly wake up, it makes no difference given how the ‘elites’ have gained almost total control of all the institutions that matter. Even the military has been suborned, judging from the way they went after Tucker Carlson.
Civil disobedience and armed insurrection are your remaining choices. I’ll see if it happens.
Joe Biden fell over several times climbing the stairs to Air Force One.
I’m told it’s Russian carpeting on those stairs. Damn Putin.
Totalitarianism will not be prevented. “The people” will do fuck all. There will be no armed insurrection. Some of us will probably kill ourselves, but nobody will give a fuck. And that will be that.
Even the BBC’s coverage of Biden’s first press conference was lukewarm, and revealed that it was preselected which reporters would be allowed to put questions.
If the beeb’s aim was not to let the idea arise in any licence-payer’s mind that the questions themselves were preselected, the answers scripted, and Joe’s repetition of those answers somewhat bumbling – then they were not trying as hard as they could have. They put more effort into preventing anyone suspecting the election was stolen.
Whether to blame the beeb or Joe for the beeb’s failure to conceal how clearly Joe felt it an unreasonable imposition for him to have to bother with the press conference at all, I leave to the opinion of readers.