Biden's Feeble, Dishonest Calls for 'Unity'

This would have been an interesting, and perhaps a much more understandable, speech for a retiring president to give. However, Joe Biden is not leaving this race, and it seems that some Democrats, after Saturday’s shocking assassination attempt, are throwing in the towel on 2024.

At a time when President Joe Biden has been struggling to shore up support with fellow Democrats following a miserable June debate performance and shaky cleanup effort, some professional Democratic political operatives said Saturday’s shooting will end up sealing the incumbent’s electoral fate.

“We’re so beyond f—ed,” one longtime Democratic insider said, noting that the image of Trump thrusting his fist in the air, with blood dramatically smeared across his face, will be indelible.

“The presidential contest ended last night,” said a veteran Democratic consultant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to give a candid assessment of his own party’s standing less than four months before the election.

“Now it’s time to focus on keeping the Senate and trying to pick up the House,” he said. “The only positive thing to come out of last night for Democrats is we are no longer talking about Joe Biden’s age today.”

One Democratic strategist who has worked on multiple presidential campaigns and on Capitol Hill said that the physical targeting of Trump robs Biden of his main argument against the former president. Biden, the strategist pointed out, has tried to convince voters that Trump is so extreme that he presents a threat to democracy.

“That message is dead,” the strategist said, after a gunman tried to kill the presumptive nominee of one of the two major parties. The bullet that struck Trump “probably saved Biden’s nomination” by freezing Democratic calls for him to step aside and “doomed his re-election.”

Joe Biden tried twice – in short statements – to assert some presidential gravitas and decry the political violence that had occurred. On Sunday afternoon, during his second two-minute statement, he said that he would be delivering a speech from the Oval Office on Sunday evening. While his staff assured everyone that it would be delivered live, everyone also knew that it would be on a teleprompter. And it was, and it was clear that Joe Biden’s line of sight was tracking the teleprompter, and not the camera.