The rumors have finally landed on a media platform -- and not just any media platform, but MSNBC. The rapidity of Democrats deciding to abandon Joe Biden has led many to suspect a kind of conspiracy behind the scenes. That's certainly true among conservatives, but now we know that "many Democratic officials" believe it too -- including those working for Joe Biden.

So let's ask: is a former president attempting a Coup Lite in the middle of an election? And by 'former president,' I don't mean Donald Trump:

Re: the growing criticism of biden, the Clooney op-ed etc, Morning Joe says:

“The Biden campaign and many Democratic officials do believe that Barack Obama is quietly working behind the scenes to orchestrate this” pic.twitter.com/Snh3eF870m

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) July 11, 2024

We've been seeing this from our commenters since the first calls for Biden to withdraw. We have all wondered about it too, but thus far the hypothesis has been short on direct evidence. What makes this interesting is that even Democrats are beginning to believe that their most popular figure may be attempting to subvert democracy -- in the form of the Democrat primaries -- to find a way for Democrats to keep their grip on power.

That certainly provides one potential motive. But wouldn't it be easier for Obama to keep Biden in place and push the media to cover up his cognitive decline again? After all, if one sees Obama as this kind of puppet-master, then he's got the perfect puppet in place. Biden essentially ceded foreign policy to Obama's advisers from the very beginning of his term, especially in its Iran-centered shift back to the Obama years. 

Perhaps that's part of the problem. According to Joe Scarborough, Biden has grown "deeply resentful" of Obama's attempts to influence his administration, resentment that apparently began when Obama convinced Biden not to run in 2016 in favor of Hillary Clinton. Both the Obama and Biden camps have tried to tamp down that idea for a few months, but the crisis in the Democrat Party has put it back into sharp relief:

These are two WH denials to me just in the past few months:

"The Biden and Obama families are like family to one other, and whomever made these claims about that relationship isn't familiar with it."
"As President Biden has said, President Obama is family to him"… pic.twitter.com/PVOcQtk3sg

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) July 11, 2024

Well, as Francis X. Rocca and I joked on Twitter, "family" and "tension" are hardly mutually exclusive. 

But still, this keeps prompting the question of what Obama wants if he's pulling these strings. Of all the people in the Democrat Party, Obama had the closest look at Biden over the last two decades, so his decline cannot have come as a surprise. If Obama wanted to secure the White House against Trump, he would have known that Biden couldn't campaign effectively enough to succeed years ago. At the very latest, the Easter Bunny incident would have flagged the problem in April 2022. There would have been plenty of time for Obama to use his influence at the DNC to promote a truly open primary and find an effective Obamaite to succeed Biden as the nominee.

Of course, if you are of a seriously conspiratorial bent, perhaps Obama wanted to anoint a successor rather than force her to compete for the nomination. And who's the only person that Ipsos sees as a legitimate challenger to Trump? The woman who famously hates campaigning:

After the debate, Trump and Biden remain tied among registered voters for the November presidential election. In other hypothetical Democratic matchups against Trump, only Michelle Obama bests Trump among registered voters.

• When asked who they would vote for in the November presidential election, 40% of registered voters say Biden and 40% say Trump. This tie between candidates is consistent from late May 2024 when 41% said Biden and 39% said Trump.
• When asked about hypothetical Democratic candidate matches against Trump, 50% of registered voters say they would vote for Michelle Obama, and just 39% say they would vote for Trump.
• All other hypothetical Democratic candidates either perform similarly to or worse than Biden against Trump. Vice President Kamala Harris hypothetically wins 42% of registered voters to Trump’s 43%. California Governor Gavin Newsom hypothetically wins 39% of registered voters to Trump’s 42%. All other hypothetical Democratic candidates earn between 34% to 39% of potential votes among registered voters.

Well, maybe. But that raises all sorts of questions about constitutional limits on access to executive power, and whether Obama may have been evading those for the last four years through other methods, too. Putting Michelle Obama on the ticket without having received a single vote in any primary or election ever would send those questions into the stratosphere. It's a lot safer to just pull the strings from above the stage than to go back onto it. 

Myself personally, I like Occam's Razor for these occasions, as well as Hanlon's Razor. The simplest explanations usually suffice, and don't assume conspiracies where stupidity explains everything. Don't forget that the Biden cover-up was actually succeeding until Biden decided that a live prime-time debate was a brilliant idea. That fits with Biden's track record on strategy for the last, oh, 50 years or so. Just ask Robert Gates.

Still, it's certainly fun to see the other side lose itself in the fever swamps about their own former president. I'll just be over here, popping more popcorn.