The former president has always considered himself to be the ultimate disrupter. But this time, the disruption is on the other side.
Through the weekend, there were an awful lot of questions that were going back and forth from people in the president’s tightest circle, and one of the questions that kept being asked was whether Joe Biden was going to endorse Kamala Harris or not. And the question didn’t revolve around whether he wanted to or not, but whether people in her camp thought it would be better for her to fight for it, win it on her own, and not be seen as somebody who was tapped by President Biden and so, in her own way, have a fresh start going into the campaign.
So the timing seems to be about as good as it could have been to end what has just been one of the craziest two or three weeks in American politics in quite some time.
I laughed a lot when the international news on TV around here claimed that “in a move that took politicians and campaign mangers by surprise, Biden left the race”… But the more I look around, the more it looks like people were surprised by it.
How come?
Because it hasn’t happened a lot. If you are the incumbent, you are running for a second term unless you are beat or dead. Leaving for whatever reasons is very rare.
Cal comes to mind… and that’s the only one that I can immediately think of.
Edit: looked it up: LBJ, Harry S Truman, Cal, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Buchanan, and James K. Polk. So yeah, really short list.
Everytime someone mentions Harry Truman, I have Linda from Bob’s Burgers song that she apparently sings while braiding her daughter’s hair come to mind:
Here goes the hair and / There goes the hair and / Where is Harry Truman? / He’s dead in the ground. / He’s dead in the ground. / He’s dead, dead, dead!
I don’t think too many realists were surprised. I think a lot of people that buy into a lot of bothsiderist bullshit might have been surprised, I dunno. Or the types that some call “blue maga”, but honestly, unless someone’s paycheck relies on believing in this, I don’t know who qualifies as “blue maga”.
