What can we call a situation where an incumbent president who already won his party's renomination disappears for several days ... and then suddenly withdraws from the race? Especially when the said incumbent had spent the previous three weeks in public insisting he would remain the nominee while his party conspired to pressure him into retirement? And then only withdraws via a tweeted letter, and almost 48 hours later still has not been seen publicly?

We could call it a typical Joe Biden operation, frankly. It's the Kabul of political retirements. At least no one died and no Americans got abandoned to terrorists in this withdrawal. 

The New York Post reached a different conclusion yesterday. Biden didn't so much withdraw or retire, they claim, as succumb to extortion in a palace coup:

Operatives at the very highest levels of the Democratic Party threatened President Biden with forcibly removing him from office unless he stepped down, sources told The Post.

The well-orchestrated “palace coup” to stop the faltering president from seeking re-election had been in place for weeks, but stubborn Biden fought it every step of the way, a source close to the Biden family told The Post on Monday.

The insider also made clear the anger, paranoia and frustration Biden displayed as the party elite circled around him and piled on the pressure. ...

As calls for him to bow out mounted, Biden insisted he would continue, but party bigwigs threatened to invoke the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution.

Before I start poking holes in this theory -- and there will be opportunities -- the NYP has a supporting theory to bolster the claim. The inexplicable decision to debate Donald Trump as well as the inexplicable timing were both part of a set-up designed to push Biden out of the race. The timing was especially important in allowing the time for the palace coup plot to unfold as planned:

Part of the “elaborate” strategy to remove Biden from the race — as he announced in a shocking letter posted on X Sunday — was allowing him to debate Republican candidate Donald Trump last month on live TV in Atlanta. ...

“That debate was a set-up to convince Democrats that he couldn’t run for president,” the source said Monday.

Could all of this be possible? Yes. And to some extent, we saw a weird kind of public ouster take place, negating fifty state primaries and caucuses that gave Biden the nomination with 87% of the vote and 99% of the delegates. 

But was this a plot, or was it a panic?

Bet on the panic. 

In the first place, the debate also reflects Biden's strategic incompetence, which has been apparent since his 1987 campaign. Biden has always gotten high on his own supply when it comes to his perception of his intellect. During his entire career, Biden has picked fights with anyone who dared to disagree with him, including randos in bars and, in 2020, an auto factory. Seeing his polling erode and figuring that he could use Trump's convictions in Manhattan against him in a debate, Biden deliberately picked that fight because he and his toadies convinced themselves that he was smarter than Trump. The early date is explicable as a means to stop his poll erosion and to start providing momentum for his party early rather than later. 

Until that debate, there was no plot to replace Biden. In fact, there was a plot to cover up Biden's cognitive impairment, and the media was all in on it. We had just been lectured about "cheap fakes," which were basically any video that accurately showed Biden's infirmities, and the media went all-in on this White House gaslighting. That cover-up had been in place since at least the Easter Bunny Intervention in April 2022 and possibly as far back as October 2021. 

Exposing the cover-up certainly wasn't in the interest of the Democrat establishment behind the Dump Biden movement. And exposing Biden would be the only way to conduct a "palace coup" and force him from office. The Dump Biden movement formed out of panic after the debate, not before it, and even then got conducted in the public eye for the most part.

What about the threat of the 25th Amendment and removal from office? That's even more ludicrous, and even Biden in his dotage would have known it was a bluff had the threat ever been made. The same amendment that allows the Vice President and the majority of the Cabinet to declare a presidential incapacitation also allows the president to declare himself no longer incapacitated. That clause is meant for two very clear situations: one, a president who is temporarily incapacitated (under general anesthesia, for example) who wants a smooth and temporary transfer of power, and two, a president incapable of communication at all. 

If it's tried on a president that can respond in real time to such a move, it rapidly creates a constitutional crisis that will destroy anyone involved. Not only would the whole mess have had to go to Congress to settle, it also would immediately raise the questions about whether the VP had attempted a coup or an insurrection against a duly elected president. And even if Congress determined that the president was indeed too impaired to continue, they would have to determine when that incapacity began ... and given the length and breadth of the cover-up, no one would want that to get exposed.

Besides all of this, a palace coup plot has to have a rational plan in place for alternative leadership. Are we to believe that Democrats did all of this just to have Kamala Harris as their new nominee? Seriously? A Harris nomination was what Democrats hoped to avoid, as Dump Biden leaders made plain with their talk about an "open process" at the convention. That fell apart because of the Kamala Conundrum, but also because none of the suggested candidates to succeed Biden wanted to get their skirts dirty in this process. 

This wasn't a palace coup. It was a panic-induced Abandon Ship! that left the captain on board to sink after he torpedoed his own vessel. That's not to say that the ousting of Biden isn't a smelly, corrupt action; it clearly is, and the chaos it unleashed did real damage to the body politic. And for that matter, their years-long conspiracy to cover up Biden's increasing senility did far worse damage and should destroy their credibility for a generation or more. But to call this a palace coup is to give the hair-tearing panic merchants far too much credit.