Joe Biden is a dead man walking. He might not know it yet (though most likely he does). Biden might as well tattoo the word “loser” on his forehead. His campaign is functionally kaput, even if he continues stumbling from “campaign event” to “campaign event,” from state to state, occasionally remembering what state he is in at the moment. We are witnessing a slow-motion implosion that has been months in the making.
Iowa hasn’t clarified much for the Democrats, but one thing is clear: there will be no President Joseph R. Biden.
As of Wednesday evening, with 91 percent of the vote reported, Biden had received 14.9 percent of the actual votes. This is now nearly three days after the caucuses! No word on when the final numbers will be available. Whoever knew that elementary math skills were so hard to master? The people who want to run America—the people who have been preparing for this day for three years—evidently have difficulties with basic arithmetic. Biden is in distant fourth place. His 14.9 percent is only two percent better than Amy Klobuchar’s result.
In an historic belly flop, Biden will probably get no delegates out of Iowa. For a man who had plenty of advantages that most other candidates did not, his actual results are pitiful. While the frontrunners are in 20 percent plus territory, he can’t even break 15 percent. One can spin bad polls, but it is hard to spin bad voting totals.
I have written on a number of occasions (e.g., here, here, and here) about my skepticism of the Biden candidacy. The left-wing media charitably calls Biden a gaffe-machine. Less charitably, he is a cognitively challenged early-stage Alzheimer’s patient. I’ve also written a few parodies of Biden (e.g., here, here, here and here). Everything in those parodies is based on actual things Biden has said and done—the more gibberish-y it is, the more it sounds like the real thing.
This is not a future president. Based on the things he says, Biden could be an escaped nursing home resident who needs low-to-moderate supervision by trained professionals.
The signs were there all along. The single biggest problem with Biden’s candidacy is the lack of any real enthusiasm for it among any demographic. This was very visible in the sparsely attended Biden “events,” which the media often tried to spin positively (“standing room only,” “packed room,” when the room itself was quite small to begin with, and half the people are actually sitting—it is easy to pack a room if the room is the size of a Dunkin’ Donuts).
Every Biden donor knows they’ve bet on the wrong horse. Writing Biden more checks is just flushing money down the toilet.
And it’s not just in Iowa. Judging by the unimpressive crowds, New Hampshire also hasn’t shown much enthusiasm for a potential President Biden. Nor has Nevada. I am skeptical that South Carolina’s black voters feel so much nostalgia for Barack Obama that it will translate into an overwhelming vote for his former vice president. Obama’s non-endorsement is surely noted by many, especially in South Carolina, no matter how many times Biden claims, unconvincingly, that he didn’t want to ask for it.
In other words, S.S. Biden is tanking.
Over the summer, his surrogates often made the claim that Biden’s supporters, who tended to be older, did not need to come out and see him. His supporters already knew all they needed to know about Grandpa Joe, and they liked what they knew. Joe Biden wasn’t flashy, but he commanded a loyal following (they claimed). Everyone knew Joe, and there were lots of “Joe guys” (and “Joe gals”) out there. Small crowds at Biden events could be explained away, because the vast masses of Biden voters would show up when it counts.
They didn’t.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) probably thought that timing the Senate impeachment trial to keep Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) in Washington (if that was really her plan) would help Biden. She was wrong. The countless repetition of the two words “Hunter Biden” was a constant reminder of what will happen to Biden himself during the general election should he become the nominee.
The Biden Crime Family corruption and profiteering might not bother Democratic voters enough by itself, but they surely, on some instinctive level, imagined the GOP carpet-bombing the country with ads targeting Biden’s corruption. The impeachment trial was just a small preview, and the Iowa voters must have wondered how Biden would hold up. It wasn’t a pretty picture. The Democrats’ impeachment fiasco has claimed yet another victim—and it sure as heck isn’t Trump.
Biden himself, given the chance to campaign in Iowa while most of his competitors were stuck in Washington for two weeks, didn’t seem to make much use of his golden opportunity. I would venture a guess that if Trump were in that position, knowing that his candidacy was on the line, he would campaign from 6 a.m. till midnight, every day. Trump would hold four or five events, or even six events, a day, every day. I can find no evidence that Biden did anything of the sort. Instead of visiting every diner, every chicken factory, and every gas station in Iowa, his schedule seemed more or less “stable.” One event a day, maybe two events a day. Nothing too strenuous. It’s the sort of stability that morgues are known for.
The Democratic Party’s epic fail in counting the Iowa caucuses votes, which makes the Hindenburg look like a minor hiccup, softened some of the blow, and may have deprived Sanders and Buttigieg of bragging rights on Monday night. But every Biden donor knows they’ve bet on the wrong horse. Writing Biden more checks is just flushing money down the toilet.
The Democrats who sat silently and sourly at the State of the Union address on Tuesday, as if they were attending their own funeral, also knew it. Nobody knows for certain what the Democratic establishment’s Plan B or Plan C is (Bloomberg? Klobuchar? Buttigieg? It is easier to see how they will lose the election to Trump than how they will win), but those plans no longer involve Ol’ Joe.
There will not be a Biden nomination, and probably not even a Biden campaign by May.