President Biden did his best to save his candidacy Monday morning, with a loquacious, pugnacious and mendacious letter to Democrats in Congress and a call-in to “Morning Joe,” all insisting he has no intention of leaving the 2024 presidential race — and implicitly threatening disaster if he’s forced out.
Notice, first, that once again the president wasn’t speaking live or off-the-cuff, though his inability to do that is the central issue worrying the nation.
A letter’s the opposite of spontaneous (did he even write it?), and the TV “appearance” had no video; he likely had a script there, too — just as we now know he’s been doing radio hits with the White House supplying the questions.
As for his substance:
Biden uses the letter’s opening graphs to whinge about democracy: “We had a Democratic nomination process and the voters have spoken clearly and decisively. I received over 4 million votes, 87% of the votes cast,” all “making me the presumptive nominee of our party by a wide margin.”