Nancy Pelosi told Pres. Biden they could do this the easy way or the hard way

Just so we’re clear, everything I said last week still holds. I’m still convinced that this whole “Biden must drop out” movement was one giant interparty ratf–k. The media went into a giant feeding frenzy post-debate, which spooked Democratic donors, who then applied pressure on elected Democrats to knife President Biden in the back on or off the record. The Democratic in-fighting drove down Pres. Biden’s poll numbers because he was being constantly attacked by his allies and by the Beltway media, and those poll numbers were cited as a self-fulfilling prophecy that Biden must drop out. So an old man, who still has Covid, was finally convinced that he needed to drop out. Politico has a new story about what happened behind-the-scenes over the past week.

Two of Biden’s senior aides came to Delaware: Early Saturday, Biden told senior aides it was “full steam ahead” for the campaign. But by later that evening, he had changed his mind following a long discussion with his two closest aides. Steve Ricchetti, who’s been with Biden since his days in the Senate, drove to see the president at his house on the Delaware shore on Friday. Mike Donilon arrived on Saturday. The two men, both of whom had been by Biden’s side during key decisions about whether to seek the presidency in 2016 and 2020, sat at a distance from the president, still testing positive for Covid, and presented damning new information in a meeting that would hasten the end of Biden’s political career.

Biden’s internal polls: In addition to presenting new concerns from lawmakers and updates on a fundraising operation that had slowed considerably, they carried the campaign’s own polls, which came back this week and showed his path to victory in November was gone, according to five people familiar with the matter, who, like others interviewed for this article, were granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. Biden asked several questions during the exchange.

Biden is sick of his own people: The announcement, which shocked the political world, almost immediately flipped the narrative around Biden: His own party, after three weeks of deriding him privately as an isolated, deluded lion in winter dragging other Democrats down with him, was showering him with loving tributes, praising his record, career of public service and a selfless decision they said put his country first. It wasn’t that the president had grown tired of the drip of defections from within his own party — although he had. Rather, it was that Biden himself was finally convinced of what so many other Democrats had come to believe since his poor debate performance last month: He couldn’t win.

Pelosi is Brutus: Senior Biden aides were bracing for former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who’d worked behind the scenes to encourage others in the party toward the kind of collective action that might finally push the president to end his campaign, to go public this week and possibly even disclose Democratic polling clarifying Biden’s dire political straits. “Nancy made clear that they could do this the easy way or the hard way,” said one Democrat familiar with private conversations who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “She gave them three weeks of the easy way. It was about to be the hard way….We were giving him the respect of the weekend to make his decision. We were hopeful that this is the decision we would make.”

Congressional leaders were pushing Biden privately: “He got the message,” said the House Democrat, granted anonymity to speak frankly. Referring to the Senate Majority Leader, House Minority Leader and Speaker Emeritus, the lawmaker said: “It was from Chuck, Hakeem, Pelosi.” Over three days late last week, Biden spoke privately with Pelosi, Jeffries and Schumer. The Senate leader traveled to visit the president last Saturday at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

Obama’s role: Those leaks [from Congressional Dems], which coincided with a Washington Post report that former President Barack Obama was also expressing concerns about Biden’s campaign privately, signaled to other Democrats who’d yet to express private concerns publicly that the time to do so was at hand.

[From Politico]

There will be some who say that Pelosi did what she needed to do and that she’s still got her finger on the pulse of the party. But I disagree. To me, Pelosi wasn’t reading the tea leaves as much as she was orchestrating the entire operation. What should have been a moment in which Democrats overcame a few bad newscycles, they instead folded at the first sign of bad news. It’s a horrible precedent and something which will not be forgotten by the Democratic Party’s foot soldiers. The thing is, after Biden’s withdrawal, the vibes have been close to perfect… in spite of Pelosi, Obama, et al. I feel strongly that Biden made his withdrawal conditional on Democrats quickly getting behind VP Harris. If you go back and look at what all of the ratf–kers were saying before Biden’s statement, they had NO PLAN for what came after they knifed Biden in the back and convinced him to withdraw. President Biden’s last act as a presidential candidate was to ensure that the party quickly coalesced behind Kamala Harris.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.

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