Was the debate just an excuse for the Democrats to dump Biden?

Biden was a nonentity in 2020. He’s a senile mess in 2024. Most Americans hate the economy and the general state of things.

By Daniel Greenfield, Frontpage Magazine

There were three types of Democrats who reacted in three ways to Biden’s debate collapse.

1. Democrat insiders who had been around Biden and knew what to expect.
2. Ordinary Dems who had limited confidence in him and thought he was too old.
3. Highly active liberals who donate and consume a lot of media, and genuinely believed the lies.

Of these three groups, only the latter were truly shocked, outraged, and made frantic by the debate. This however is also the group at which much of the media’s political analysis and fundraising is aimed.

Their panic helped touch off a mostly disorganized effort to dump Biden.

But was the debate reaction the cause or a convenient pretext?

Polling is barely a science and this can be debated up and down, but the overall analysis of the post-debate polls shows that the immediate impact was limited. Biden was polling badly. Now he’s polling a little worse.

And in a number of polls, he still performs better against Trump than Kamala or other proposed replacements.

Few people voted for Biden in 2020. Fewer are voting for him now. Or for Kamala. They’re voting for the Dem agenda. They’re voting against Trump.

Biden was a nonentity in 2020. He’s a senile mess in 2024. Most Americans hate the economy and the general state of things.

Even a great debate performance by Biden wouldn’t have changed that.

And Biden’s peak came with his debate against Paul Ryan, where he acted like an obnoxious condescending ass. Doing that routine wouldn’t have saved him in 2024.

It’s not really about the debate. Biden is a bad candidate, but the party doesn’t have a good one. Its only real campaign slogans are anti-Trump.

And, as Whoopi Goldberg said, it doesn’t matter what Biden does.

But the debate provided an opportunity for a potential reboot.

Once the media fastened onto the idea of ousting Biden, his poll numbers began dropping further creating what the media calls a self-fulfilling prophecy, a virtuous cycle of the kind that it usually deploys against Republicans and conservatives.

The debate was an excuse, but the desire to dump Biden is real.