Joe: Take the Damn Cognitive Test

Poll analyst Nate Silver lists the signs that a party is getting rid of a president under the 25^th Amendment. He says we’re about halfway up the ladder, which has these at the starting rungs:

• Back-channel conversations
• Anon leaks to press
• Influential non-electeds and donors saying he should resign
• Backbench elected officials saying he should resign
• Signals from senior party leaders saying he should resign with plausible deniability
• Megadonors saying he should resign and withholding funds
• Normie senators or representatives saying he should resign

I’m seeing all this right now, not yet as a march to the 25^thAmendment removal from office, but certainly in an effort to get him to withdraw from the 2024 race. The latest such sign is reports that the White House visitor logs show that President Biden’s doctor Kevin O’Connor met with a Parkinson’s disease specialist and a nurse who coordinates Biden’s care nine times since July 2023. (Now, I don’t think it a leap to suggest that sources just whispered to people like Alex Berenson and Jonathan Levine what to look for. Maybe they didn’t. Maybe someone wanted to take hours to pore through the logs, but maybe not.)

There’s plenty of information supporting Silver’s view that we’re halfway up the ladder, and over at the Wall Street Journal, Kim Strassel lists a lot of it.

Here’s a summary:

Texas Rep. Lloyd Doggett on Tuesday became the first elected Congressional Democrat to “respectfully” call on Mr. Biden to withdraw from the race. Maine Democratic Rep. Jared Golden, fighting one of the tightest House races in the country, did the functional equivalent with an op-ed that explained it didn’t matter what Mr. Biden did after his “poor performance” because it has been clear for months that “Donald Trump is going to win.” An unidentified House Democratic lawmaker told CNN that his caucus wants “to give [Mr. Biden] space to make a decision [to step aside], but we will be increasingly vocal about our concerns if he doesn’t.”

Nancy Pelosi conceded it was “legitimate” to ask if Mr. Biden had an episode or a… “condition.” South Carolina’s Rep. Jim Clyburn said he’d support Kamala Harris… should Mr. Biden make way. And Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.) said Democrats want reassurance that the debate was a “real anomaly, and not just the way he is these days.” If Mr. Whitehouse feels the need to cover his bases in blue Rhode Island, panic really has set in.

The polls merit this alarm. We’re now getting the first post-debate surveys and, while the top-line gains for Mr. Trump are mixed, the internals for Mr. Biden and the Democratic Party are uniformly abysmal and getting worse. Numerous polls show Mr. Biden’s approval rating at all-time or near-to-all-time lows. A WSJ poll shows that 80% of voters now say the incumbent is too old to run, while several polls show a growing number of Democrats want him replaced at the top of the ticket.

Newsweek provided more relevant signs that the president’s party continues to climb the Silver ladder:

Following a report that Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, is at odds with President Joe Biden’s reelection bid, a novelist’s cryptic post on Friday about the senator is raising eyebrows on social media.

According to a Friday report by the Washington Post, Warner is attempting to assemble a group of his Democratic colleagues to ask Biden to conclude his presidential run. The Post said it spoke to two people with direct knowledge of Warner’s effort as the senator believes that Biden can no longer remain in the race against former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, following his highly criticized debate performance last week.

In a world of uncertainty, there’s one thing I’m certain of: Political officeholders and their well-heeled donors always consider their personal interests first and foremost, and if sticking with a failing candidate hurts those interests, they turn on him. In this case, it’s really bad luck for them, because there is no sign of a candidate in the wings who can reverse their sinking fortunes.

In any event, there’s every reason to believe Biden is digging in and refusing to withdraw from the race, He said so in his interview on ABC the other night., the first of his flailing efforts to undo the damage of his poor debate performance. He said clearly that “MAYBE” he’d withdraw from the race if the “Lord Almighty” came down and told him to do so.

His adherents have continued to act as if they think they can hide his decline by managed appearances and scheduled not only the ABC sitdown with fluffy questions by George Stephanopoulos, but followed it up with local radio interviews. The hosts of those radio shows revealed to CNN that “the questions were scripted and provided by the White House.”

What Biden’s team has chosen to do then is host thinly attended rallies, speak to Democrat officeholders, have Biden chat with Stephanopoulos, and participate in these scripted radio shows. What Biden declines to do — a decision his team apparently supports — is to take a cognitive and neurological test. Which is the only means to persuade those who have seen him that our eyes deceive us and he’s really fit for the highest office.

As long as this game continues, I predict his party and donors will keep climbing that ladder. He has only one way to stop the move to push him out of the race — or maybe even the office — take and pass the damn test!

American Thinker

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