Has anyone seen this elderly man, last seen wandering off a plane in Delaware? Do we need a Silver Alert on the Atlantic seaboard?

Sine July 17, no one outside the White House has set eyes on Joe Biden, not even when making a momentous and historic decision to forsake a nomination he'd already won. We only have Biden's Twitter account and the word of his aides that Biden willingly stepped aside. T. Becket Adams raises the question as to whether we may have entered a real constitutional crisis:

Five days ago, Biden returned to the White House with a COVID diagnosis. At the time, Biden insisted that he wanted to run again and beat Trump. Four days after that, Biden basically tweeted out his withdrawal without so much as a peek into the White House briefing room. Needless to say, that's a bizarre way to end one's political career in such a precarious moment, especially after an assassin nearly killed the president's opponent eight days earlier. And now it's been nearly 24 hours since Biden's withdrawal and we still have no live public appearance from him to confirm his status. 

Is Biden still alive? Is he conscious? Did the 1993 film Dave just take place for real? Is Kamala Harris acting president? 

Beege will have more thoughts on this later, but Harris is likely calling the shots one way or the other. With Democrats attempting to anoint her the nominee, Harris and her team will necessarily need to start directing policy decisions to align with her campaign. Congress may want to prepare to get some answers as just how much control Harris will take. 

The good news is that Republicans had also prepared for the success of the Dump Biden Democrat coup. It took less than a couple of hours after Joe Biden pulled out of the race, and after several high-profile Democrats endorsed Kamala Harris, for a Trump-supporting super-PAC to drop a new ad against Biden's endorsed heir presumptive.

And it hammers on the deception and dishonesty surrounding Biden's cognitive decline as well as the failures of the Biden administration:

Democrats had better get ready for a lot more where this came from. Republicans and the Trump campaign have a trove of such clips, as well as other reporting and anecdotes about Harris' fumbles as VP. 

But Republicans had better get prepared for Kamala's oppo-research machine too, Mark Judge warns. It's vicious and it's more competent than Harris herself is:

Even Democrats and liberal journalists are turned off by Harris’s oppo machine. On Aug. 7, 2020, high-ranking Democratic operative David Axelrod expressed alarm at the amount of opposition research being used in the competition to become President Joe Biden’s running mate. He was also shocked by the amount being spent by Harris. “I can’t remember any VP selection process where so much oppo research has been dumped,” Axelrod tweeted. “If I were @JoeBiden, looking for a good and loyal partner, that should be a source of concern.” 

Reporter Ryan Grim of the Intercept replied: “Axelrod is being polite. But if you check @KamalaHarris FEC records, she spent more on oppo research than anybody has ever seen. When called on it, her camp said it was ‘self research’ but nobody believed it.”

I myself was once in Kamala’s crosshairs. 

Be sure to read on, but the game has shifted since Mark wrote this. He assumed JD Vance would be the target, and he's a novice at the oppo-research infighting. Now Harris' target will shift to Trump, who's impervious at this time to such tactics. Democrats have tried to torpedo him for almost a decade using any political means necessary, including lawfare, and it hasn't slowed him down at all.

So even if Harris is competent at this part of campaigning, Trump and his team are pretty good at this game, too. Harris' attack dogs won't do her much good -- and that will highlight her incompetency in all other phases. 

Will the media report it, though? I'll address that in later posts. 

Update: Kamala Harris spoke from the White House a few minutes ago, while Biden remains in seclusion:

She praised him for his “honesty, his integrity, his commitment to his faith and his family, his big heart and his deep love of the country,” and said “we are deeply grateful for his service to the nation.”

Harris spoke on the South Lawn of the White House for a celebration of NCAA championship teams, filling in for Biden as he recovers from Covid.

There's no issue with Harris taking Biden's place at the South Lawn event. However, normal protocol would have the president comment at the White House about his decision before the VP does so. And this sounds somewhat like a eulogy for Biden's presidency, too. It's strange.

All Biden has to do to settle this is walk into the White House briefing room and speak for a minute or two. And he's not doing that, which is even stranger, under the circumstances.  

Update: A few people on social media are pushing back on this, saying Biden needs to isolate from people because of COVID and that it's normal for VPs to fill in when presidents aren't available. First off, the White House had already said that Biden had substantially recovered, and COVID is a cough and cold now. Biden could wear a mask and toddle out to the podium to speak for a couple of minutes. And there's normal about a president withdrawing from a re-election nomination he'd already won -- and doing so by tweet.