Schmuck of the Week: Dr. Jill Biden

I am really getting sick of writing about this. What else is there to say? Almost the same percentage of Americans who claim they eat ice cream (88%) believe Joe Biden is too old to serve a second term (85%). What is left to debate here?!?!

Yet, because the Democratic Party of 2016 was the most incompetent political body in the history of planet Earth, Joe Biden’s vain stubbornness is buttressed by the facts of history, and the alternate universe where he told Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to go fuck themselves and ran for president in 2016 anyway is probably a lot nicer than this one.

Last week, I awarded the Schmuck of the Week to new Senior Presidential Advisor Hunter Biden, as he was one part of Joe’s cloistered inner circle encouraging him to run what increasingly looks like a doomed campaign in defiance of his party’s wishes. This week we tunnel further into the core of this small and immensely powerful inner circle: Joe Biden’s wife.

One Democratic operative close to the campaign told Politico that “The distance between the inner circle and the next ring out is a big, big gulf,” and their reporting paints a picture of a First Lady who fundamentally misunderstands the situation she and her small and powerful group of advisors find themselves in. Per two people familiar with the campaign, via Politico:

The first lady has also expressed fear that bowing out would make the Atlanta debate a defining image of her husband’s presidency, an outcome she finds unacceptable, the people said.

This is what clinched her this week’s Schmuck of the Week, Splinter’s new subscriber-only weekly column that will be free up through the week of the Democratic National Convention. If this is the logic running the campaign as all reporting indicates, we really are doomed. Public perception of Biden’s legacy is being prioritized over what we have been told is a fight for the very future of this country. I understand the fear of that calamity becoming the final image of Biden in America’s collective consciousness, but the entire Democratic Party has spent the past week very clearly indicating that they would love nothing more than to give Joe Biden a hero’s farewell and nominate a new candidate that the public does not think is fundamentally incapable of doing the job of president.

If he dropped out now, his legacy would be secured. The party would do one gigantic victory lap highlighting all his domestic accomplishments while probably avoiding using the words Israel or Gaza altogether. All the “transformational change” Biden helped usher through the Senate that gets under Barack Obama’s skin will be the only thing Democrats talk about for the rest of the year. If he steps down, Biden becomes the Democratic Kingmaker, supplanting his longtime rival he accused of undermining him behind the scenes this week.

The decision to remove himself from the ticket would be characterized as a selfless decision by a good man putting the good of the country above his own ego. It would defang the Republicans of their main attack, who are all incredibly pleased today that Biden did just enough at his proof of life NATO press conference last night to keep this crisis going.  There is no world in which this Democratic Party would allow the Atlanta debate…and the ABC interview debacle…and “Vice President Trump” to become Biden’s enduring image.

To believe otherwise requires a level of cynicism that is surprising to even my Splinter-tinted eyes. Does Jill believe that if Joe stepped down, the party would just forget him altogether, and let his final moments define their own competence? How insulated do you have to be to not see this avalanche of Democrats who desperately want Joe to drop out, but will not place serious pressure on him out of respect? There is no way that they will just abandon him and leave his legacy for dead should he step down from the top of the ticket.

The next sentence in this report indicates that Biden’s sister seems far more amenable to objective reality, as they note that Valerie “also remains committed to the campaign but has not ruled out advocating changes if the race becomes damaging to her brother’s health and legacy.”

This is damaging his legacy! Ending it would stop damaging his legacy! How is this not obvious!?!?

If you were trying to do the most damage to his legacy, defiantly staying in against the wishes of his party, providing a new embarrassing soundbite every week, and then losing to Donald Trump is the best way to ensure that Joe Biden goes down in history as one of liberalism’s great pariahs. He and his family would never be welcome in liberal spaces ever again, and the Biden name would become synonymous with hubris-driven incompetence. It blows my mind that Biden’s inner circle cannot see this very obvious train on the tracks coming their way. All they have to do is willingly step aside and their legacies are secure for generations to come.

Jill is a sympathetic figure in the party, but by all available reporting, she should have more than spent whatever goodwill she had remaining. Axios reports that it is the First Lady’s close circle of advisors, Chief of Staff Annie Tomasini, her top advisor Anthony Bernal, and her longtime aide Ashley Williams who are keeping Joe in a bubble:

One former Biden aide told Axios: “Annie, Ashley and Anthony create a protective bubble around POTUS. He’s staffed so closely that he’s lost all independence. POTUS relies on staff to nudge him with reminders of who he’s meeting, including former staffers and advisers who Biden should easily remember without a reminder from Annie.”

I’m no constitutional scholar but if I were a self-appointed Democracy Defender™ I would worry about the First Lady’s advisors shielding the President of the United States from outside input and providing him with a self-serving and distorted view of reality.

So congratulations Jill Biden, you and Hunter have clinched the first familial back-to-back Schmucks of the Week for your efforts to prioritize Joe’s ego and perceived legacy above the good of the country. That said, I am willing to make a promise to you right now: advise Joe to drop out of the race, and the subsequent week I will name myself the Schmuck of the Week while I sing your praises and detail to everyone what an idiot I am. Until then, I can only conclude based on everything we know that one of America’s biggest problems right now is the toxic White House influence of Jill Biden.