The apparent deadline for Democratic Party leaders to have the Goldwater to Nixon conversation with President Biden has passed.  (See HL 177, 11/8/2023).  The more extreme Tom Eagleton moment may never occur.[1]  Now, the period between those two opportunities, is the time to assess a third, the Jill to Joe opportunity that many, including your blogger, placed substantial stock in.

Chuck Schumer, Amy Klobuchar, Dick Durbin and Sherrod Brown were supposed to have individually or collectively told Joe Biden, who has fought and done so well, that he had, but now must not risk the significant chance that the mental acuity factor will counterfactually and irrationally help Trump and as in “1066 And All That” end history.

Those Democratic Party leaders didn’t do their job.  And as stated, the calamity that might necessitate the party (using existing emergency mechanisms) pulling Biden and substituting Kamala Harris, one of the aforementioned leaders or Gavin Newsom, has not happened and may not occur.

Some, including, HL, think so highly of Dr. Jill, that we hoped she would convince Joe to step aside, given the risk and the harsh consequences of not only losing the 2024 election but winning to become an 85-year-old American President with “the world on fire and no one to save it” but him.[2]  But recent revelations about the Bidens, their German Shepherd, Commander, and the 15 months of delay before sending him to live on a farm, dampen hope that Jill can persuade her husband to end his reelection efforts.

Dr. Jill Biden

In a 273-page disclosure, responsive to a FOIA request, we learned that Commander attacked agents with the Secret Service 24 times in the July 2022 to October 2023 period.  The attacks occurred at the White House, Camp David and vacation residences in Delaware and on Nantucket.  Some of these attacks were serious.  It is not known whether there were additional attacks on others working with and for the first family.  Unlike the hypothetical Jill to Joe conversation about standing down, many of us have greater familiarity with the dangerous dog situation.  A pet much beloved by and member of the family, that would die protecting them and is very gentle with the tiniest baby among them, bites and attacks people it believes are threatening them.

Sargent Shriver & Tom Eagleton

What must be done after the first time-honored and sanction-free bite is heartbreaking but necessary.  That painful decision and task must follow bite 2, possibly bite 3, but never ever only after 24.  Dr. Jill either didn’t understand this, did but took no action, tried and failed to convince Joe, or overruled his decision to do the right and necessary but very painful thing.

In each of these four scenarios we see a wonderful woman incapable of doing a very specific and very difficult type of task.  One analogous to but much less difficult than convincing the Good Soldier Joe that he must not run.  So, it’s on to Plan C, invoking the ghosts of Tom Eagleton and Sargent Shriver.

[1]   In 1972, Democrats nominated a ticket of Senators George McGovern and Thomas Eagleton, who later was pulled in favor of former Peace Corp. Head and Kennedy in-law, Sargent Shriver, because of the disclosure of Eagleton’s history of clinical depression and treatment by electroconvulsive therapy.

[2]  Chris Isaak, Wicked Game.