Judging from the rosy statements emanating from Biden Land (because you can’t trust the mainstream media anymore), the Democratic Doom Squad has been squashed by an outpouring of loyalty to the president. The idea of widespread “panic” among Democratic donors, politicians, and voters has, according to this official narrative, been greatly exaggerated: Having beaten Donald Trump once, President Biden is in the best position to do so again. So we can dismiss as outmoded these examples of self-created defeatism:
- This week the Cook Political Report, the gold standard of nonpartisan political analysis, moved six states in Trump’s direction, including Minnesota, which last went GOP in 1972.
- Polling analyst Nate Silver, in his latest postdebate forecast, gives Biden a 29 percent chance of victory.
Surely those are evanescent blips. So were Nancy Pelosi’s TV comments on Wednesday morning urging Biden to make a decision on the realism of running. (After all, what does Pelosi know about politics?) Then there were a few prominent Democrats like Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, who bravely told CNN on Tuesday evening what he has been saying in private: Biden should strongly think about withdrawing. (Of course, Bennet ran ineffectually for the 2020 Democratic nomination, so his insights are presumably tinged with envy.)
These naysaying scenarios have always been ludicrous.
A bad cold and a bit of jet lag at the debate would never be enough to upend a great president like the 81-year-old Biden at the top of his game. After all, the legendary George Abbott was directing shows in New York until he was 102; the self-taught Grandma Moses was still painting on her 100th birthday. Why should anyone expect Biden to step aside when he is still so young and vigorous?
Just as a thought exercise—for entertainment purposes only—imagine that the misfiring polls are right. A pall will hang over America imperiling democracy for years to come as Donald J. Trump golf-cart rides along his ruin and retribution tour.
But, fortunately, there will be important compensations. The bestseller lists in 2025 will be chock-a-block with Biden White House memoirs. The insiders who presided over the biggest Democratic defeat since 1988 will revel in telling the world what really happened behind closed doors and napping curtains.
Some of the memoirs will be built around vicious attacks on the media since no one would have noticed that Biden couldn’t complete a sentence in his debate with Trump if it weren’t for the negativism of political reporters. If the mainstream media hadn’t called Biden shaky, the president would have won the debate in a walk.
Hunter Biden, who graduated from Yale Law School, may be one of the first out of the gate with a screed that I can picture being titled The New York Times in the Library With the Lead Pipe. A sample bit from this still-unwritten book by the president’s Ivy League–educated son: “The Times has always scorned my Dad because he didn’t go to one of those fancy schools the Eastern elite loves. That’s why they hate outsiders like us Bidens.”
But the best stories will come from Biden’s longtime loyal aides, who sensed the deterioration of the president and wisely decided to prop him up, Weekend at Bernie’s–style.
Here’s a dramatic scene from the 2025 blockbuster called Do We Wake the President? The events took place right after the debate:
The three of us were scheduled to brief POTUS on his declining poll numbers at 2 p.m. in the Oval. But when we walked in the president was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed breathing softly. As we crept closer, we heard Biden murmur as he dozed, “I beat Old Caleb Boggs in 1972 and I can do it again.” POTUS seemed so happy that we didn’t want to break the spell. So we never showed him the polls.
Sitting at the top of the bestseller lists the entire summer of 2025 was an insider account called You Notice When the POTUS Says Nix:
I have been working for Joe Biden for more than 30 years, off and on. I love the guy, and that’s why I have always been loyal, never criticizing him to reporters, even off the record. Starting in early 2024, when I began privately worrying about his fitness for another run against Trump, I found a few moments to quietly hint to the president that maybe it was time to bask in the gratitude of a grateful nation and enjoy life from the sidelines. As softly as I put it, I was stunned by his black Irish rage. “Nobody else can do this,” Biden shouted. “And Jill loves life in the White House.” Confronted with this immovable boulder, I dropped the issue and soldiered on, praying for the best.
Another postelection insider book that did quite well for its author was titled Courage and the Corridors of Power:
There were indeed difficult days after the debate, which I want to stress was never my idea. In fact, I stayed as far away from the debate prep as I could. But after it was over, they wanted me to take the lead in cleaning up the mess that I didn’t make. My big contribution, after the George Stephanopoulos interview failed to turn things around, was to spread the argument with the press and party insiders that Biden’s decision would be partly shaped by the advice from Democrats in Congress. What a shuck. Most House Democrats, like the Congressional Black Caucus, have safe seats. They would be around in 2025, even with Trump in power. So what’s the upside for them to cross Biden, who wouldn’t go anyway? Even Hakeem Jeffries knows he will probably be speaker after the 2026 elections.
One of the few Biden books that never took off, despite an upper-six-digit advance, was called, in an homage to Dylan, It Ain’t Me, Babe:
In the dark days after the debate, there was a series of small meetings among those who have been with Biden for years, asking the question: “Who will tell the president?” It certainly wouldn’t be Jill or Hunter. Longtime friends and colleagues looked at me at these moments and, as I slumped in my chair and tried to seem invisible, the Dylan lyric came back to me. I wasn’t going to be the one jeopardizing a lucrative future career as a Hollywood executive or a seat on the board of the Biden Library. They don’t give MSNBC gigs to famously disloyal Democrats. I knew I would be personally fine if Trump won, so I wisely pretended I never heard the question. And, yes, I started drinking very early on election night.
One book on the Biden debacle was never written because no White House insider had the courage to live it. That much-needed book would have been called, Resignation in Protest Over POTUS.
