BRANDON J. WEICHERT | THE WEICHERT REPORT
Those who know me understand that I am not a Joe Biden fan. There is little in his platform or personality that lends itself to this author approving of–let alone supporting–his presidential bid. But that still doesn’t mean I’m not a human being. In Joe Biden, we have the most compromised candidate for president in history, both morally and quite possibly, mentally. Yet, that does not mean that Joe Biden has not had a career of abject loyalty to the Democratic Party and specifically Barack Obama going back years.
One would think that in politics, a trade that is built on deception, loyalty would be valued above all else. Especially the personal loyalty of the sort that Biden has consistently exhibited to his party and his old boss, former President Barack Obama. But, that is not the case.
This is a man who apparently subordinated his own quixotic quest for the presidency in 2008 to that of the young upstart, Barack Obama–who held Biden in contempt (and despite claims from the press, it appears likely that Obama never truly wavered off that view of Biden)–by becoming Obama’s vice-president. We were told by the media at the time that the Obama-Biden partnership in 2008 was the ultimate pairing: it was the young Luke Skywalker being schooled by the elderly and wise (haha!) Obi-Wan Kenobi (which, of course, ended badly for poor old Obi-Wan).
In fact, Obama constantly undermined and besmirched his number two every opportunity he got. Without rehashing the eight very long years of the Obama Administration, when push-came-to-shove, then-Vice-President Joe Biden believed that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was a weak candidate to succeed Obama. Biden believed that Hillary would not be a good follow-up to the “successful” Obama legacy. She would trash it, in his view (not unlike how many conservatives viewed George H.W. Bush as Reagan’s successor).
Joe Biden was actually correct on that one.
Biden’s son, Beau, as he lay on his death bed, his body racked by cancer, urged his father in between his dying breaths to run for the White House in 2016. Rumors suggest that it was Joe Biden’s last promise to his dying son that he would fulfill Beau’s wishes and run for the highest office in the land that year.
But, familial piety–to say nothing of supposed friendship–meant nothing to Obama.
Rather than give his number two a shot, Obama had a sit-down in the Oval Office in 2016 with Joe in which he laid it out fairly well: either Joe got onboard the Hillary train or he’d be left out in the dust. What followed was a bizarre Rose Garden speech in which Biden made what was the most campaign announcement-sounding non-announcement speech in history. Because of this, Biden was awarded (literally) by Obama…and then shunted off to Delaware to live out his final days.
When 2020 came around and Hillary was rummaging through the woods of upstate New York while Trump was sitting in the Oval Office, Biden announced his intention to run for the highest office in the land. He had done his part to Obama and he had not split the party anymore than it was in 2016 by running against Hillary (ironically, 2016 was Biden’s best chance at the White House). Biden was the clear choice to succeed Obama; the only viable candidate in 2020 to carry on the legacy. Yet, enter Obama and his cadre, who did everything short of cheating to ensure that Biden was thoroughly impugned and his capabilities doubted (beyond Biden’s obvious problems) throughout the Democratic Primary. Obama preferred Senator Kamala Harris of California.
Some friend Obama was.
The Obamas were slow to endorse Joe by many months. Obama’s endorsement was sterile (not the fawning praise he heaped upon Hillary in 2016). His endorsement read, “I believe Joe has all of the qualities we need in a president right now. He’s someone whose own life has taught him how to persevere.” This begrudging endorsement came from the guy who was effectively a business partner with Biden for eight years; it spoke volumes about Biden’s capabilities and about Obama’s character (or lack thereof in both cases). That Biden could not encourage his old boss to even give him a fair shake after all of these years–and that Obama thinks so little of his number two that he’d risk harming the Democrats’ chances of regaining power–is shocking.
A man who Joe Biden routinely referred to as his “brother” while they were in office together effectively gave Biden a terse, 30-second, shrugging endorsement. Obama’s endorsement was akin to a book reviewer describing a book as “imminently readable.” Gee, thanks. In some instances what often remains unsaid is more telling than what is said. This is one of those instances, I believe.
We know that senior people in the Biden camp have been wounded by Obama’s lack of enthusiasm for the Biden Campaign. Obama’s lack of faith in Biden’s capabilities back in 2016 apparently stuck in the former vice-president’s crawl when he quipped in his 2017 memoir, Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose, that Obama “was not encouraging” of him. Ya think?!
And now that Senator Kamala Harris has been selected to basically be America’s first prime minister, what was the result?
Biden’s poll numbers only modestly improved from where they were before she was named. Sure, he’s been in double-digit leads over Trump-Pence in multiple polls for months–and the Republicans cannot get complacent (frankly, it is going to be very hard for Trump to win). Yet, in many of those polls Democrat voters were oversampled. And if Biden-Harris were so inevitable as the Left would have you believe, then why only the modest boost in their poll numbers? Why did Trump’s numbers rise in some major polls in the last week, despite him being the target of such a sustained campaign of organized, collective hate?
Michelle Obama has a recorded speech that will be premiered at the reduced, COVID-friendly Democratic National Convention. That should be a real barn-burner. And if Trump is the cause of Michelle Obama’s “low grade depression” as she recently asserted, then why didn’t she do what everyone on the Left wanted her to do and run as Biden’s token, black female running-mate? She would have most definitely boosted Biden’s chances of election. Instead, she opted for a podcast and what I assume will be a highly restrained, very edited down recorded speech.
Meanwhile, former President Obama has supposedly expressed extreme skepticism, according to reportage in the New York Post and Politico.
What a guy!
Barack Obama has next to zero loyalty for those who obsequiously shilled for him for eight years; he apparently has little respect for those who heaped effusive praise upon him and his agenda; and Obama clearly resents the fact that senile Joe Biden is the apotheosis of Barack Obama’s legacy.
Despite all of this, though, Biden has still been hopelessly loyal to Obama and the relationship he erroneously thinks he has with the forty-fourth president. It’s pathetic. A decent man (as Obama purports to be) would have swallowed his pride and lived up to his endless public exhortations of Biden over the years and given the old codger his due. But this is not the way of Obama. Not only is Obama’s behavior indicative of a truly depraved character, but it’s also a sign of how bad Biden’s judgement is.
If Biden can be so off-the-mark about Barack Obama, imagine how badly he’d be in gauging Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, the mullahs of Iran, Kim Jong-un, or Nicolas Maduro.
Character is destiny. For all of the talk about Trump, thus far, he’s stuck by his number two through thick-and-thin–and his number two, Mike Pence, has stood by him.
But Obama and Biden were made for each other. And now it’s time for Americans to shoo them off the center stage of American politics and get to work rebuilding this country from the Wuhan Virus and the Democrat-encouraged riots in the cities. The last thing we need is to be led by such fake and indecent people. Whatever Trump’s foibles and failures, they are clearly understood and visible to all. With Biden and the Obamas, who knows what we’re getting. No, thank you.
THE WEICHERT REPORT 