By: Jeffrey Blehar – nationalreview.com – July 9, 2024

Democrats are falling into despair as they realize that, in slow steps over the past four years, they have unwittingly consummated a suicide pact with Biden.

You all know the ending of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, right? Surely this remains a universal American cultural reference point. Slim Pickens and the boys in his bomber crew are struggling heroically (despite damage to their airplane and on-board radio) to complete the mission they’ve been assigned from the man at the top. It is, of course, a bit of a shame that in this case the man at the top happens to be a psychopath seeking to trigger a nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviets, but hey, that’s not their department. These boys are hard-working Americans, and when Americans set their mind to a task, then Sir, you’d best believe they get it done, come hell or high water. And so there Slim is, trying to get the hydrogen bomb stuck in the plane’s damaged bay to drop, trying to fix the wiring to open the doors, when — SNAP! — he unexpectedly succeeds such that the bomb drops with him atop it, and he rides that sucker down to the ground, waving his cowboy hat like a bronco-buster as he sends himself along with the rest of the world to our final reward. Wildly hilarious or deeply despairing? Both, and in ample measure, which is the point.

This brings me naturally to the matter of Joe Biden, revealed as a mental and physical invalid to the world on June 27, who seems dead set on riding this bomb all the way to the ground — the consequences be damned. Did you see the aftermath of the House Democratic Caucus meeting this morning, where the entire team got together to discuss “the Situation”? Watching the Democratic congressmen file out of their big “get on the same page” conclave was like watching Redskins fans leaving RFK Stadium in 1985 after Lawrence Taylor snapped Joe Theismann’s leg in half. (I have waited 39 years to deploy this analogy in an appropriate context.) Not one but multiple Democratic congressmen anonymously described the meeting to reporters as akin to a funeral. (Later, another anonymous Democratic representative disagreed: “That is an insult to funerals.”)

And the reason for that is because Joe Biden is not dead — at least not yet. He is very much alive and kicking, mounted astride the Democratic Party and pounding furiously on its empty hull, kicking against all attempts to pressure him to step down from the campaign or the presidency. He has made it clear to Democrats and donors alike that he would sooner see the entire party incinerated with him than quit this campaign. The “Replace Joe” boomlet is dying down now on Capitol Hill — one imagines it will flare up again after the next inevitable gaffe, but the clock is running — and Democrats are falling into bleak despair as they realize that, in slow steps over the past four years, they have unwittingly consummated a suicide pact with Joe Biden. One way or another, it seems, Biden will get his wish.

Indeed, the order of the day is Mutually Assured Destruction, as Benjy Sarlin perceptively points out over at Semafor: “The message coming from the White House is clear: Biden isn’t going anywhere, and if you come after him you’ll be the one who gets blamed for undermining the party’s general election chances.” And it has been fascinating to watch how the Biden White House has pulled every lever available to it in order to make sure the bomb drops as scheduled; Cedric Richmond (former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus) emerged from the Biden administration woodwork to offer a warning best interpreted militarily: “I think it’s interesting that not one African-American member has called on the president to step down. . . . I wouldn’t be rushing to do that if I was from Virginia.” Biden himself phoned into MSNBC’s Morning Joe, his favorite television show, to prove his gumption to the world (a task made more difficult by the audible shuffling of papers that made it clear he was reading from scripted answers).

We’ll see how the media takes all of this — whether they outright rebel at this final insult to the American voters or suck it up and return to their appointed cheerleading roles. I wouldn’t be terribly optimistic myself, but on the other hand (and more optimistically) I also recall a memorable couplet from the poet E. E. Cummings (trust me, liberal journos would love him), in “i sing of Olaf glad and big” (1931):

If ever there was a time for the media to find its principles, assumed or otherwise, it is now. Joe Biden isn’t just taking himself or the Democratic Party on a one-way trip to Armageddon. He currently remains president of the United States. He carries all of our fates with him. I would prefer not to have to sing sad Vera Lynn songs at the end of this story.

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Source: Biden Is Riding the Bomb All the Way Down, Taking America with Him | National Review