Today's point-and-laugh bit on Conservative Twitter is remembering how Politico columnist Jonathan Martin proclaimed back in February that it was a cuckoo conspiracy theory that Biden would be replaced on the ticket. Who looks like a failed prognosticator now?
This was the snotty headline:
Get Used to It: Biden Isn’t Going Anywhere
The GOP fantasy crowd is so accustomed to conspiracy theories that they’re betting the Democrats will switch candidates at the last minute. Have they actually paid attention to politics?
It's easy for an expert to pooh-pooh inevitable crystal-ball notions like "Michelle Obama for President." Talk radio can go on for days with that sort of grist. But the swagger just looks like it had boomeranged in the most awful way for "J-Mart."
On Sunday even Nikki Haley, ostensibly the GOP’s Team Normal candidate for president, put down her cash at the window. “My bet is 30 days from now, I don’t think Joe Biden is going to be the nominee,” Haley told supporters.
She and other Republicans are about to look as bad as those who took the 49ers.
In the spirit of helping the GOP understand their Democratic counterparts, and to avoid any more bad bets, I’ve put together a primer for Republicans on why Biden will be his party’s standard bearer once more.
I especially enjoy his argument that Republicans were spouting this because "Too many of them, even those in elected office, don’t believe or understand the mainstream media."
Lab Leak theory of electoral politics, 2024. https://t.co/iZ6elG3XmY
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) July 22, 2024
Martin allows the caveat the Biden could have a "health crisis," but this was more of a...health exposure. Martin proclaimed the window had passed: "Democrats had their chance to speak out against Biden running for reelection at nearly 82, they failed to do it and there is no “they” now poised to intervene."
He thought Donald Trump was the inevitable reason why no one was going to step in Biden's way -- but Donald Trump became the inevitable reason why Biden had to go.
Martin relies on the conventional political view, that the "red trickle" election of 2022 lowered the panic: "If Biden loses to Trump this fall, it will be in part because Democrats were lulled into security, or denial, by an electorate which favors their coalition more in midterms than in presidential elections."
He observed "Republicans always tend to think Democrats will stop at nothing to win and there exists some powerful forces who can swap out Biden for a younger candidate. But Boss Daley isn’t walking through that door."
Martin certainly believed that the age issue could be damaging for Biden. We noted Martin's article in November 2023 strongly suggesting Biden was losing his capacity to do The Job.
2024 will be an extraordinary election, and it demands extraordinary measures.
That’s in part for reasons Biden refuses to accept: his capacity to do the job. The oldest president in history when he first took the oath, Biden will not be able to govern and campaign in the manner of previous incumbents. He simply does not have the capacity to do it, and his staff doesn’t trust him to even try, as they make clear by blocking him from the press. Biden’s bid will give new meaning to a Rose Garden campaign, and it requires accommodation to that unavoidable fact of life.
