Biden Addressing Nation on Quitting Presidential Race
What to watch for in Biden's first public address since dropping out
President Biden’s Oval Office address at 8PM ET will be his first since dropping out of the election via tweet and promptly ghosting. In fairness to him, he did have COVID, but what a time to go radio silent!
His silence thus far has left a number of important questions unanswered. Here are the ones I’ll be watching for:
What will Biden do to afford Harris the independence necessary to publicly convey policy differences she might have with him, something VPs aren’t normally allowed to do?
Why did Biden seek reelection after pledging during his 2020 campaign to be a “bridge” to a new “generation of leaders” (his words)?
Does Biden apologize for dropping out so late that it cut short the time VP Kamala Harris has to campaign; or show any contrition at all?
Biden said only the “Lord Almighty” could make him drop out of the race; but just days later, he did exactly that. What changed?
How does Biden respond to the argument that if he’s not fit to campaign, he’s not fit to serve?
I’ll be discussing Biden’s address live in my chat, so please join me! You can join by clicking the blue button at the bottom of this post.
An unexpected joy of being on Substack has been getting to know my subscribers via the app’s chat feature. In total honesty, I dreaded doing it at first, worrying I was becoming a pundit who just talks at people. (I barely care what I think! Why should anyone else?) But the chats haven’t been like that at all: I learn all sorts of things from the commenters who notice things I don’t. I’ve been so impressed with the context people add that I’m starting to think I should just loop the chat into the stories I’m working on or maybe even turn the chat into an open source intelligence project. More on that later!
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I'd like answers to those questions too but don't expect any. I don't think he has the insight at this point to realize how screwed up this all is, not to mention his baseline ego. I think he (and/or his inner circle) will continue to hamstring Kamala at any attempt to veer from his policies, should she even want to. The best thing she could do for votes (not donor dollars but actual votes) would be to ramp up Biden's economic populist tendencies but back the hell off the warmongering. But I'm not optimistic enough to think that will actually happen.
This is where Ken learns to love democracy