WWJD?

Joe Biden's combination of leftist policies, scattershot governance, and bumbling incoherencies has tanked his Presidency and all but ensured that the Republicans will take over both houses of Congress in the mid-term elections. Biden’s reaction to this outcome is fertile ground for speculation.

I pondered this a few weeks ago (Bubba, BO, and Biden), pondering two options:

1 - Biden emulates Bill Clinton after his mid-term wipeout, tacks to the center, and embraces the more popular GOP policies that fed their (expected) mid-term victories.

2 - Biden emulates Barack Obama after his mid-term wipeout, digs his heels in, insists on his policies, and blames/scolds the GOP for actually heeding the voters' desires.

I didn't consider a third possibility.

I've been idly musing, ever since Harris was chosen as Biden's running mate, of a "grand plan" wherein Joe waits until the mid-terms, then steps down and elevates Harris to the Presidency. Doing so at that time would allow her two full terms afterward (assuming she could win them), and become not only the first woman President, but only the second President to serve more than 8 years.

Idly, I say, because I'm not prone to believing in grand plans or Machiavellian scheming of this sort - politics is more like herding cats than like executing intricate, multi-step and multi-year schemes - and because politicians such as Biden have too much ego to get to the WH and then just walk away after two years. Still, this isn't that complicated a notion, and would rely more on Joe playing ball and recognizing his cognitive decline than anything else.

That was all before "Cackles" Harris proved herself so unready for prime time that the Democratic back room is likely bald from excessive hair-pulling.

Still, the possibility remains, and more so now that Biden is folding like a cheap suit.

The Ukraine invasion offered him an opportunity to step up and a distraction from his domestic mess, along with an excuse to undo some of his most destructive policies.

He has so far proven to be not remotely up to the task. His gaffes have left the WH scrambling to damage control more than once, he's sent mixed signals on many occasions, and he's offered Putin oodles of ammunition for bolstering domestic support against the West. Worse, he's proven to be either so mule-headedly obsessed with his green energy fantasy or so in thrall to the lefties pulling at his sleeves that he won't do the most obvious thing to offset and undermine Putin - drill for and export domestic oil and gas.

All this simply digs the Democrats' hole deeper. The election gambling markets currently forecast a 75% chance of the GOP taking the Senate and an 84% chance of them taking the House, and any honest tea-leaf-reader knows that, come January 1, 2023, it’s very likely Congress will be majority-Republican.

Will Joe decide he'd rather spend the rest of his 80s enjoying post-Presidency life, giving six figure speeches to those blind fools who still think he's all that and a bag of chips, rather than bumble, mumble, and stumble through two years of gridlock followed by a primary challenge?

The new fly in this ointment is the Left's resurrection of the Biden laptop business. This may correlate with Biden's various declines, and the possible realization by the masters (wait, can’t use that word any more) overlords of the universe at the NYTimes and WaPo that the story could be used to cajole a stubborn Biden into retirement. It's not too difficult to imagine Dean Baquet figuring he could put his finger on the political scale - again - by quietly publishing an admission of what the rest of us already know, and giving the OK to those who slavishly follow the NYT playbook (including, I feel safe in speculating, the party apparatchiks and the careerists in the Justice Department (but I repeat myself) to actually act on Hunter's shenanigans.

Would Joe pardon his son and then resign after the mid-terms?

Would Joe pardon his son and remain defiantly enthroned in the Oval Office?

Will Joe throw Hunter under the bus?

Would the Party suggest to him that their best hope for winning in 2024 is to give Kamala two years to prove her critics wrong - or to implode throughly enough to clear the deck for a new candidate?

Will Joe resign with the quiet promise that Kamala will pardon him and Hunter after the 2024 elections?

What will Joe do?

Only time will tell.

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Yours in liberty,

Peter.