Will Biden's "Bite Me, It's Too Late" Message Inspire Democrats?

Can we unite behind a guy publicly telling us to chortle his balls?

Built from a photo by Jim Watson via Getty.

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Democrats want Biden off the ticket. Democratic voters want him off the ticket by a margin of two to one, and most Democratic office holders see Biden’s campaign as an asteroid hurtling towards their careers. Biden needs a miracle to win back his party’s support. And the message that he seems to have settled on to achieve that miracle is: “Lick my hairy balls, I’m the nominee and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Biden’s team is trying to force an early vote that would lock Biden in as the nominee. The sooner Biden officially becomes the nominee, the better it is for his camp: They need to officially crown him before every living Democrat turns against him and/or he disintegrates into a pile of sand. The problem, like so many problems, began in Ohio: Ohio had a law requiring candidates to be nominated by August 7. That’s two weeks before the Democratic convention, so the DNC planned a virtual roll call vote before that day. But in June, Ohio changed their law — you can always count on Ohio to eventually do the less-stupid thing! The change means that Democrats’ virtual meeting, like 99 percent of all Zoom meetings, is a pointless bit of wankery that could easily be skipped.

But Biden’s team is still pushing for an early vote. They wanted (but it now seems won’t get) a vote starting as early as this weekend. And the DNC spent most of Tuesday arguing (incorrectly, it seems) that the early vote is still necessary. DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison got in a heated Twitter exchange with Nate Silver, which is bad on its face: I’d argue that during election season, the DNC chair should be trying to win the election, not beefing on social media like a goddamn teenager. And to make matters worse, Harrison made a garbage argument that was smacked down by normie liberals who used to be Biden backers. It was a dispiriting episode; it was like watching an NBA coach feud with a ten year-old when he’s supposed to be coaching the NBA finals, and also the kid is a Make a Wish kid, and also the kid kicks the coach’s ass.

The dispute between Biden and Democrats has gone from being a most unfortunate dustup to a hair-pulling bitch fight on the national front lawn. After observing a period of mourning for Trump’s ear, the parade of public Biden defectors has resumed: Yesterday, Adam Schiff became the latest Democrat to publicly call for Biden to step aside. Pelosi and Schumer are reportedly working against Biden behind the scenes. Which explains why Biden is trying to rush the nomination: He wants to lock himself in before Democrats grow the cajones to oust him. It’s a power play in a situation that’s become an all-out grudge match, and I think it’s fair to ask: Can anyone imagine that nominating a president that the party clearly no longer wants will somehow work out?

The only situation I can think of that is even remotely similar is Trump in 2016. But even that was still very different. Trump had far more support: The National Review and the Bush family had their conservative knickers in a knot, but you didn’t have two-thirds of party voters and virtually all elected officials wanting Trump off the ticket. Another big difference is that Trump won a primary; he faced a competitive process and won a majority of delegates. Biden beat Dean Phillips, and no offense to Dean Phillips (though if Phillips can read English, he’ll infer some offense from what I’m about to say), but an incumbent president clearing the field of all serious challengers does not amount to a competitive process. You can argue that more Democrats should have run, but Democratic voters weren’t given a choice, so pretending like Biden won a mandate from the voters is one of the more absurd lies that we’re being asked to believe.

Are we really going to have a convention in which an arena full of people pretend that they aren’t seething with anger at the guy being nominated? How could we possibly pull that off? The emperor isn’t just wearing no clothes — he’s on the Jumbotron shaking his bare ass and giving the crowd a full penile helicopter. Is Kamala Harris really going to give a prime time speech praising the guy who publicly shafted her — wouldn’t that be like making Galileo throw Pope Urban VIII a birthday party? Is the crowd going to pretend not to notice when a spider crawls out of Biden’s nose during his acceptance speech and calls Barack Obama “Bark Almont”? Are people really going to chant “four more years”, and if so, could that be considered elder abuse? Some people say that choosing the nominee at the convention would be a shit show, but I’d argue that The Greatest Shit Show On Earth is already on the agenda, and therefore any change would be for the better.

I think that Democrats aren’t just on course for a huge loss: I think we’re on course for a confidence-destroying event that wrecks the Democratic brand. The worst political mistakes are ones that reinforce negative perceptions, so imagine how badly it will hurt Democrats — who are already seen as a bunch of low-T pee-pants — if we nominate a guy we don’t want because we were too polite and scared to push him out. Won’t we rightly be seen as a bunch of cowards? Won’t everything we’ve said about Trump suddenly look like the Himalayas of bullshit? If we give in to Biden’s bullying, then we might as well have every candidate for the next ten years campaign in a diaper and a big pink bonnet, because we will be the party of laughable sissies.

Things have gotten far too bitter for there to be a normal Biden campaign. The spat is so public and so nasty that it would be laughable to turn on a dime and say “now that he’s the nominee, I don’t think his brain is turning to pudding!” The projections are terrible for Biden even though they don’t factor in unprecedented situations like “a large percentage of his recent supporters want to banish him to Elba” and “the candidate makes Boomhauer from King of the Hill sound like FDR”. There is just no way to make this work. A party leader can’t lead if his party is furious at him. And Biden’s message that the party can lick his salty nugget pouch probably won’t win many converts.

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