MAUREEN DOWD: Lord Almighty, Joe, Let It Go!
Everyone wants Joe Biden gone.
Even the people who don’t want him gone really want him gone.
“Everyone’s waiting for Joe,” said one top Democrat. “And he’s sitting at home, stewing and saying, ‘What if? What if? What if?’ We’re doing things the Democratic way. We’re botching it.”
I have many happy memories of Rehoboth Beach. I went there growing up and have Proustian recollections of crispy French fries with vinegar sold on the Boardwalk. But now my gladdening images have been replaced by a maddening one: President Biden hunkered down in his house there, recovering from Covid, resisting talking to anyone who will tell him the truth, hoarsely yelling, “Get off my beach!” at the growing list of Democratic lawmakers and donors trying to warn him that he is pulling down his party and the country.
It makes me sad that Biden doesn’t see what’s inescapable: If he doesn’t walk away gracefully right now, he will likely go down as a pariah and ruin his legacy.
Translation: Look Joe, a generation of college historians and Democratic Party operatives with bylines turned Harry Truman’s reputation around and taught that he was a tenacious working class hero, despite his leaving office with a 22% job approval rating. And then, according to a 2021 article in New York magazine by law professor and journalist Paul Campos, “Truman was a very rich man on the day he left the White House, and he became a good deal richer in the five and a half years between that day and the passage of the [Former Presidents Act,”] which as Jeff Jacoby writes, “Truman lied shamelessly and repeatedly about the state of his finances in order to guilt-trip Congress into passing.”
If we can puff up Truman’s reputation so much to make him a worthy successor to FDR (and collectively memory hole his seamier side as well), don’t think we won’t do the reverse to yours in the next decades if you stay in and the Bad Orange Man wins in November.
On the other hand, Dowd writes:
As for those D.C. careerists surrounding Biden who a) hid his true condition; b) gaslighted the press for focusing on what they called a nonexistent age issue; c) shielded the president from the truth about his cratering chances of winning; and d) seem to have put their self-interest first?
One way or the other, they’ll probably be out of their jobs soon.
Well, until the next Democratic president takes office, and they all get jobs in his administration, as so many Obama retreads did under the current (p)resident. But left unsaid by Dowd is how did all of the “investigative reporters” at her paper either spend four years being so incurious about Biden’s obviously deteriorating condition or unwilling to report it?
Of course, that answer is obvious: the Times’ business model requires cosseting their overwhelming leftist readers, and not giving them any bad news that would cause subscriptions to drop. Or as David Harsanyi wrote earlier this month, “If You Were Duped On Biden’s Cognitive Decline, You’re Too Dumb To Be A Journalist,” which is true — but Biden’s former stenographers need some excuse to explain to their readers their latest 180 pivot.
Kudos to Dowd for at least bucking that trend, despite being an opinion columnist, regarding Joe’s shameful treatment of his granddaughter. Or at Mediaite noted last year: Critics Attack The New York Times for Daring to Do Journalism on the Biden Granddaughter Story.
UPDATE: NY Times Seems to Hope Everybody’s Forgotten About the ‘Cheap Fakes’ Cover Dems/Media Ran for Biden.
