Democrats can still jettison Biden as an ‘August Surprise’

At a certain point, none of this makes sense.

“This” being President Joe Biden officially becoming the Democratic nominee for president come the convention in August. The number of Democrats who are honestly thrilled by that eventuality would not fill a Mini Cooper.

A growing number of Democrats see Biden as becoming the political version of “Groundhog Day.” Every night they go to sleep dreaming of having a new nominee, and every morning they wake up to the same old Biden. A president many now see as gaffe-prone, needing to be told where to stand, where to walk and what to say.  

As The Hill headlined earlier this week, “Biden’s weakness becomes bigger and bigger worry for Democrats.” Indeed it does.

Because now, as the article highlights, it’s not just about winning the presidency: “Democrats are growing increasingly worried that President Biden’s brutal swing-state numbers could drag down their candidates in the Senate.”

What is being offered up as a “worry” or a “concern” to the public is being treated as a “blind panic” by the Democrats I speak with on a regular basis. As left-of-center Jonathan Chait recently framed it in New York Magazine: “The point here is that Democrats have a Joe Biden problem, not a partywide problem.” Nightmare may have been a more accurate description.

Regarding Biden being a drag on the Democrats chances to hold the Senate in November, a Democratic strategist told The Hill: “Let’s cut through the BS, on the three top issues — inflation, immigration, and the war in Gaza — he’s in the toilet. The polls show he’s not doing well with some of the key voting blocs: young voters, Black voters, Hispanic voters.”

Bingo.

But the truly troubling news for the Democrats does not stop there. Biden is badly losing a three-front political war, and every single person who works in that arena — Democrat or Republican — knows it.

He is losing, or has lost, the confidence of much of the Democratic political class, who fear he is permanently off his game. He and the Democrats are getting rocked weekly by an ascending Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is getting on one state ballot after the other. The latest is Texas, where Kennedy just turned in an astounding 245,572 signatures — twice as many as are required — to gain ballot access in the Lonestar State.

If one were to extrapolate that number based on basic statistics, it’s easy to imagine that Kennedy could have more than 10 times that number of voters in Texas. Voters who many Democrats believe — especially given the full-on assault on Kennedy from the Democratic National Committee and the Biden White House — RFK will drain from Biden.

And last on the three-front battle sits former President Donald Trump. His rally last week in New Jersey was jaw-droppingly impressive, and anyone who claims otherwise is delusional or so deep in the tank for Biden and the Democrats that they can no longer see daylight. Tens of thousands of people came out to roar their approval of the former president and his policies — no doubt, a good many of them disgruntled Democrats.

More and more are coming to believe — as do I — that all of the partisan “lawfare” and Deep State attacks being orchestrated by Democrats against Trump are only increasing his voter base. A rising number view the tactics as an un-American way for Biden and the White House to keep his main political opponent off the ballot. Many also believe this strategy is increasing Trump’s poll numbers — a belief which should be terrifying to the Biden White House and the DNC, when they stop to realize that Trump outperformed his poll numbers in both 2016 and 2020.

With that as background, what is a president seen as cognitively challenged by tens of millions of Americans to do? Apparently, put out a cringeworthy video challenging Trump to two debates while attaching all kinds of strings. 

Biden released a 13-second video this week — with five jump-cuts, even though he was reading off a teleprompter — where he came across more as the old guy screaming at kids to “get off my lawn” than the president of the United States. Read Biden, while seemingly channeling Clint Eastwood:

“Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020. Since then, he hasn’t shown up for a debate. Now he’s acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal.”

Watch out what you are told to wish for.

Again, every single Democrat I speak with wishes they had someone other than Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris as their nominee come November. Be that someone California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker or Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

While the Biden White House, the DNC and media loyal to the Democrats may scream “the cake is baked, and Biden is the nominee,” there is still a very viable escape hatch come the convention in August should the Democrats choose to use it. An escape hatch that would allow them to switch out Biden for Newsom or another candidate.

Until that hatch is welded closed, I believe it will remain a realistic option. An option desired by countless Democratic voters across the nation.

An option which would go down as the most shocking “August Surprise” in modern political history.

Douglas MacKinnon, a political and communications consultant, was a writer in the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and former special assistant for policy and communications at the Pentagon during the last three years of the Bush administration.