Biden outwits Republicans one last time with Harris’ nomination for Chicago
Kamala Harris officially accepts the Democratic nomination for president
Vice President Kamala Harris concluded the Democratic Party Convention by accepting her party’s nomination for president.
WASHINGTON – Thursday evening in Chicago belonged to Kamala Harris, but behind the vice president’s triumphant and combative acceptance speech stood one main man: Joe Biden.
President Biden was nowhere to be seen on the final night of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center as balloons fell on a beaming Harris, her narrow lead in the polls grew and Donald Trump raged on social media.
Yet Biden’s fingerprints were all over it, mocking a Republican Party that thought it had finally beaten him.
Just a few weeks ago, the Republican Party seemed, Biden was finally trapped. He had emerged largely unscathed from the White House’s efforts to block Trump’s 2020 candidacy, from the failed Republican impeachment trial, and from a special counsel investigation into his handling of classified documents.
Then, wounded by his dismal and aimless debate with Trump in June, Biden managed to anger his opponents one last time last month by throwing a sideways pass to Harris near the end of the game as Republicans in the end zone were already celebrating.
“They are paralyzed,” said Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee. Republicans “don’t have the space they need to adjust to Kamala Harris because Donald Trump is the head of the Republican Party.”
After six years of being Trump’s near-obsession, Biden may be back in the lead thanks to Harris’s surging campaign, some observers say.
“The tide has definitely turned here in Michigan, where a month ago Trump was ahead of Biden by six to seven percentage points and now he’s behind by a handful,” said former U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, a Republican who retired last year after more than three decades in the House. “The enthusiasm for the Harris-Walz ticket has been contagious to everyone, as Trump has not changed his message and is now finding it difficult to change course.”
Hunt for Biden
Trump has been fixated on Biden for years.
Biden was a centrist former vice president when he launched his final bid for president in April 2019. Polls identified “Joe from Scranton” as the biggest threat to then-President Trump.
In a July 25, 2019, Oval Office phone call about U.S. military aid to Ukraine, Trump asked President-elect Volodymyr Zelensky to “do us a favor” by announcing a criminal investigation into Biden and his son, Hunter, who had worked for a Ukrainian energy company. Trump suggested that American aid was contingent on it.
The request fed into efforts by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to discredit Biden over his son’s business dealings. Much Ukrainian dirt was brought to light, but nothing stuck to Biden. Instead, Trump was impeached by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives for extorting Zelensky and acquitted in the Republican-controlled Senate.
The uprising of January 6
In November 2020, Biden defeated Trump by a record 81 million votes, with Trump receiving the second-highest number of votes ever at 74 million.
Trump cried voter fraud, but his claims were dismissed in courtrooms across the country. On January 6, an angry mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol and delayed the certification of Biden’s victory, but the new president was sworn in anyway. Trump was impeached and acquitted a second time, and now faces federal and state criminal charges for his efforts to overturn the election.
But the persecution continued.
A “cursed” investigation into Biden’s impeachment
In 2022, Republicans won control of the House of Representatives and launched their own impeachment proceedings against Biden and his adult son, Hunter, who was the subject of an ongoing Trump-era Justice Department investigation.
The Republicans had a key witness: FBI informant Alexander Smirnoff, who told agents that the two Bidens had each pocketed $5 million in Ukrainian bribes. Trump, House Republicans, and Fox News hosts created a meme about the so-called “Biden crime family.”
Then the disaster: In February, David Weiss, the Trump-appointed prosecutor who had prosecuted Hunter Biden for weapons and tax offenses, announced Smirnoff’s arrest. Smirnoff, according to the Justice Department, had lied to the FBI about the Bidens on the instructions of “officials linked to Russian intelligence.”
Last Monday, as the Democratic National Convention began in Chicago, House Republicans released a report – a far cry from their promised impeachment inquiry – accusing Biden of helping members of his family obtain money from foreign interests by attending dinners and making phone calls with them.
“They cursed themselves,” said Norm Eisen, who was special counsel during Trump’s first impeachment trial. “I have never seen the leadership of the House commit to impeachment on a more tenuous basis. It was humiliating.”
A crack in the dam
President Biden faced his own special counsel, Robert Hur, who was asked to investigate Biden’s handling of classified information after Obama-era material stored in his garage and an office was discovered.
While Hur recommended not prosecuting Biden, he dropped a bombshell in his February report when he wrote that the 81-year-old president was an elderly man with “diminished capabilities,” including memory loss. Democrats were outraged, and the White House invoked executive privilege to prevent House Republicans from obtaining recordings of Biden’s interviews with Hur.
The Republicans struck. “A man who cannot be held accountable for the misuse of classified information is certainly not fit for the Oval Office,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, along with other top Republican politicians.
A debacle in the television debate
Biden took the Hur fiasco in his stride and prepared for a fight that promised to be exhausting.
Then came his debate with Trump on June 27, where Biden’s weak performance and rambling answers appalled Democrats and gloated Republicans. Further verbal gaffes only heightened concerns.
The campaign was relaunched in the remarkable period of eight days.
Trump survived an assassination attempt on July 13 and, in an unprecedented and symbolic moment, emerged bleeding and angry from a scrum of Secret Service agents. He named Ohio Senator JD Vance as his vice presidential running mate and accepted the Republican nomination for president before an enthusiastic crowd in Milwaukee.
Biden spent most of the time in a bind over Covid, while his poll numbers plummeted and Democrats, who warned of a Trump landslide victory, panicked. The president had one card left to play, and he held it until Sunday, July 21, when Biden dropped out of the race and named Harris at the top of the list to succeed him.
Four and a half weeks later, Trump and his party have still not recovered, even though polls show a neck-and-neck race.
“Harris was left uncovered in a blitz and was completely open when the DNC completed the pass, and there was not much time left on the clock,” Upton said of the Democratic convention. “Now only one last effort can save the weary Trump team.”
Trump, who mourns the loss of the candidate he had hoped to defeat effortlessly, is now complaining that Harris’ nomination was the result of a “coup” and that Biden’s support for her plays no role in this.
“Donald Trump is in the position of running against a ghost,” said Steele, the former Republican chairman.
And Biden has once again outsmarted his opponents.
“He always escapes the noose,” Eisen said, “because there is no noose.”
