Biden's ouster by backroom elites will have consequences
National Post, 24 July 2024
The next candidate who runs into turbulent polls cannot focus only on persuading voters. They will need to watch their backs
The dumpster fire of American presidential politics is raging so hot that it is considered an epochal triumph that a man of obvious mental diminishment has been dragged out of the race. President Joe Biden realized that his main campaign message — I am not senile! — was not a path to victory and withdrew.
Having felt (slightly) guilty for making an old man walk the plank, Democrats are now bathing him in sincere affection and faux praise as being the greatest president since FDR, who was president when Biden was born.
That will pass, and Biden’s denouement will be recorded for what it is — a stubborn man whose vanity forced his party to eject him in the daylight after covering up his incapacities in the darkness. By insisting on running when enfeebled, Biden has weakened the presidency.
In Britain they call them the men in grey suits, the party elders who can bring down a leader from the backrooms. They have an institutional expression at Westminster, where the Conservative backbenchers — the 1922 Committee — can force a caucus vote of confidence in the leader. Canada’s Conservatives have adopted something similar by their decision to abide by the Reform Act of 2014, passed by the Harper government.
In Washington during these past few weeks, the men in grey suits were led by a pant-suited woman, Nancy Pelosi, who was a close enough friend to the president that she could plunge the knife in gently.
The consequences will be long-lasting, for a precedent has been set. A duly elected candidate — 14 million votes in the primaries — and sitting president, can be forced to withdraw his bid for re-election if enough party leaders, armed with polling data and fundraising numbers, prevail upon him.
It is important to clarify why Pelosi and her many companions threw Biden out. Manifestly, it was not his lack of capacity. Had that been the reason, they would have done it long ago, having undoubtedly seen his diminishment up close.
Now that Biden has withdrawn, over the next months we shall have a flood of reporting on how bad his condition was and how much his collaborators knew, starting with his successor, Vice-President Kamala Harris. The journalists who covered for Biden now feel exposed by him, so they will attempt to regain credibility by exposing in turn how wide and deep the deceits were.
No, the grey suits drove Biden out on the grounds that he was unpopular and could not win. The only thing that changed after the debate was that he went from being an actual governing liability to a likely electoral liability. The claim was made that his candidacy would lead to a loss of Democratic seats in Congress. The grey suits were content with a diminished president; they could not abide diminished poll numbers. If the country suffered, they would patiently tolerate it. They would act forcefully though to protect the party and their own interests.
There is nothing shameful in a political party seeking to shed a perceived albatross. But the impact will be far-reaching.
In 1990, the Iron Lady wanted to fight. Margaret Thatcher had won three consecutive majority governments as Britain’s prime minister. But that mattered little when her caucus concluded that she would be unlikely to win a fourth. So the grey suits assembled and told her she had to go. And if the greatest post-war prime minister could be pushed out, then anyone could. Tony Blair was ejected by internal party dissent after he also had won three consecutive majorities.
In the 35 years after Churchill retired in 1955, there were five Conservative party leaders, including Thatcher. In the 35 years since her defenestration, there have been nine, with a tenth on the way.
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