Buried in the Sunday frenzy after President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race was the latest jaw-dropping chapter in the Wall Street Journal’s excellent reporting on the president’s cognitive decline. It tells of a Biden visit to Capitol Hill to try to convince his Democratic colleagues to pass the infrastructure bill. He was described as speaking “disjointedly” and failing “to make a concrete ask.” A “frustrated” then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi had to step in and clean up the mess.
Two of the Journal reporters, Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes, got the ball rolling on this story when they published the “signs of slipping” report early last month.
But this anecdote stood out. It was from October 2021 – nearly three years ago. According to the Journal, it was “the last time Biden met with the House Democratic caucus on the Hill regarding legislation.”
The obvious implication is that everyone around Biden knew about his impairments – not just since the June 27 debate, or even over the past few months, but for several years. Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues knew. Biden’s White House and campaign staff knew. But no one said anything, until the political ramifications were so high that they had to force the change.
And that’s where this instant swap out of Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris gets interesting. Harris was swiftly installed as the Biden replacement – she was anointed by the Democratic elite and the donors and delegates. And, to some extent, the compliant media. Notably, though, not the voters – they won’t get a say this time, apparently. She appears to have everything in line to seal the nomination in short order.
But there are very real questions surrounding Harris too. If all these other figures could see the country was being led by a very unsteady president, mentally and physically, wouldn’t Harris be able to see that too? In what possible scenario is President Biden’s vice president not directly involved in the cover-up? Or, perhaps even more embarrassing, was she so detached from the day-to-day activities at the highest level of the administration that she simply hadn’t noticed?
Two of the most consequential articles about Biden in the post-debate scrum were written by Axios’s Alex Thompson, where he revealed the “10am to 4pm” window where Biden is “dependably engaged,” in contrast of all the other hours where he appears more “fatigued” and “likely to have verbal miscues.” The other was Olivia Nuzzi’s incredible, and personal, look at “the conspiracy of silence to protect Joe Biden” in New York Magazine. Neither mentions Harris by name, but wouldn’t the VP be witness to the evidence laid out in these articles – perhaps more than any other individual in political life?
Put simply – what did Kamala Harris know, and when did she know it?
All of these are the sorts of questions a curious press would be digging into. But that’s not what we’ve seen in the days since Harris was elevated to Democratic nominee-in-waiting through a notably undemocratic process.
For a brief four-week period, the Acela media had their “Real World” moment – where they stopped being polite and started getting real about Biden. The notebooks were emptied, and the truth was revealed – often, it seems, in the service of exerting pressure on Biden to step aside.
Well, they got what they wanted – and now the Kamala Koronation is well underway. “Kamala Harris: Gen Z Meme Queen,” push the try-hards at Politico, the epitome of cringe in written form. Or the New York Times, running one puff piece after another, like this one on how Harris has “leaned into cooking in a way no other candidate has.”
The Democratic and media elite won, and appear content with their selection. But they’ve done it before, and they can do it again. And as I laid out in my February column on the way the Democratic Party and establishment press can push Biden out of the race, there’s more than enough time to push Harris to the side too, in favor of a candidate who has a better shot of beating former President Donald Trump in November.
Let’s imagine a scenario where we get polls coming back in a couple weeks, and they’re even more disastrous for the Democrats with Harris than with Biden. She’s failing in interviews – the voters don’t connect with or like her, and they feel burned by the process.
The Democrats could push Biden out of the presidency and install Harris as the new president – a historic first female president at that. In exchange, she drops out of the nomination process, in favor of a candidate who could beat Trump. This could happen as late as several weeks after the convention, where she could gift the nomination to someone else appointed by the DNC themselves, still with enough time to get on ballots.
And how would the nudge off the 2024 stage happen? Very likely the same way the pressure campaign took place over these past few weeks with Biden – through the media.
Maybe they’ll start exploring, and start revealing, just how deeply she was involved in the cover-up of Biden’s decline. How she allowed the fraud to be perpetrated on the public, for her own political future. Was there a deal that if Biden wins in November, he would step aside and allow her to slide into the presidency – a deal that Biden’s debate debacle ruined?
The point is, while it may feel like weeks of turmoil (including an assassination attempt, remember that) – has settled into a scenario where we know the future, we absolutely don’t. This is an insane year, and the smart money is on the political storylines getting crazier instead of calmer.
There are skeletons in Harris’s “Biden’s mental fitness” closet. Just because the legacy press is participating in the Harris coronation today doesn’t mean they won’t start exploring the truth if she suddenly becomes expendable.
Steve Krakauer, a NewsNation contributor, is the author of “Uncovered: How the Media Got Cozy with Power, Abandoned Its Principles, and Lost the People” and editor and host of the Fourth Watch newsletter and podcast.