Will Dems use 25th Amendment on Biden?

 Ward Clark:

The Democrats already froze befuddled Joe Biden out of the presidential campaign, and one can hardly blame them; the Biden reelection effort looked like it was going to deliver the Democrats a catastrophic loss in November. Imagine things being so bad that Kamala Harris looks to be the better alternative! That's where they were, and invoking that big vaudevillian hook from stage left to yank old Joe out of the picture was, candidly, the smart thing to do.

Might they go the next step, though, and invoke the 25th Amendment to take the declining President Biden out of the picture altogether? Douglas MacKinnon, opinion contributor at The Hill, has some interesting thoughts, not least of which is that this invocation of the 25th may not be necessary.

MacKinnon writes:

This is already the most surreal presidential election of our lifetimes. I wrote several times in this space over the last two years that I never believed Biden would be the nominee, and I was proven right. I also honestly believe Trump will pull away from Harris come September and October.

So, what then? How would the Democrats and the Harris campaign react to that?

With panic and trepidation? Hopefully, MacKinnon is right about this. The VP does, after all, have her share of the blame for the mess the economy is in, and unlike most presidential challengers, Donald Trump has a record in the White House to point to, and pre-COVID, things under Trump were pretty darn good. Inflation was lower, and prices on virtually everything were lower; here in the Susitna Valley gasoline prices were around $2 a gallon in late 2020, and now they are nearing $4. Heating oil has seen a similar increase. And don't get me started on groceries.

As MacKinnon points out, Joe Biden is almost certainly not capable of the job; he's probably not the one actually doing the job in any case, making the 25th Amendment question bigger than just a campaign issue.

...

I suspect that Biden has been a figurehead for some time and that his staff is actually making most of the decisions.  When Biden does make appearances these days he looks out of it and seems incapable of deciding where he is and how to leave the stage.  The Democrats should have invoked the 25th Amendment earlier and probably would have if they had a better Vice Presdient than Kamala Harris.

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