So for all the constant backstage whispers on a Biden withdrawal - “Yes he will! No he won’t!- the unasked question is: if Biden drops out, who will the left-leaning media endorse?
The Washington Post of all places came close to touching the subject, headlining:
What happens if Biden drops out of the presidential race?
President Biden is facing increasing pressure from Democratic leaders to reconsider his reelection bid. Here’s a look at what could happen next.
The Post mused on six questions:
- Who would replace Biden?
- How would a new nominee be chosen?
- How quickly could a nominee be chosen?
- How well does Harris poll against Trump?
- What would happen to the money Biden raised?
- What would this mean for the DNC convention?
The giveaway on media sentiment is easily detected with the answer to the Post’s first question: Who would replace Biden?
The Post answers:
Vice President Harris is the likeliest candidate to replace Biden at the top of the ticket, and many in the party have already signaled they’d accept her as the nominee. And at a NATO news conference on July 11, Biden said he wouldn’t have picked her as his vice president “unless I thought she was qualified to be president from the very beginning.
Which is to stay, the media are already getting its signals from Bidenland. Harris is the one. Not California Governor Gavin Newsom, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer or any other Democrat who is a known or lesser unknown by the Titans of the Liberal Media.
The question then will be: When will the media start digging and digging in the fashion the liberal media does to prominent Republican candidates?
It is not hard to believe that as this is being written or read a collection of liberal media moles are burrowing away to see what dirt they can find on Trump’s vice presidential pick, Ohio’s 39-year old Senator J.D. Vance. A guy who has had as much success in his life in business, book writing, the military and law school? Surely there’s something - something! - that can be found by lefty dirt-diggers to slime Trump’s choice. The Pulitzer Prize judges reward journalists who damage Republican careers.
For those who came in late, this business of burrowing into the closets of new high-profile Republicans started decades ago, most probably with GOP 1952 vice presidential candidate, California Senator Richard Nixon.
Nixon famously had stirred left-wing animosity as a young congressman who unearthed the Communist ties to left-wing FDR/Truman rising bureaucratic star Alger Hiss. In proving that Hiss, as charged, did in fact have a background with ties to the Communist Party, the liberal media developed a hatred for Nixon that never went away.
His rise to GOP nominee Dwight Eisenhower’s ticket launched the then-famously left-wing New York Post to dig into a “fund” that was essentially an open expense account for candidate Nixon provided by rich GOP donors. This was instantly proclaimed a scandal, and Nixon had to take to television to deny any dishonesty and proclaim his innocence.
In the speech, he stated that the only gift he had accepted was a cocker spaniel dog that a donor had sent for his two young daughters. The dog had been named “Checkers” - and ever after any politician who got caught in a scandal was queried as to whether they would make a “Checkers speech” to save themselves.
The Washington Post’s famous political cartoonist Herb Block would draw Nixon with a seriously ominous five o’clock shadow of a beard, slinging mud.
But treat some rising Democrat star in similar fashion? Not a prayer.
So assuming all these Democrat whispers are correct and Biden does withdraw, no matter the tussle over his replacement, no Democrat is going to get any kind of serious look under a microscope to find their flaws.
But what if the herd quickly migrates to, say, Harris, and some other Democrat chooses to challenge her anyway? If that happens? And the media is suddenly supposed to cover a Harris vs. Newsom race? Will there be dirt digging by the media targeting a Harris opponent?
Look out, Gavin.
