Biden’s Last Act Caps Off Career of Failures

How Biden’s Last Act Spoiled the 2024 Campaign for Democrats and America

Known as an insecure, stubborn, and quick-tempered politician during his entire career, Joe Biden, whose resentment against Barack Obama and the ‘elites’ of the Democrat Party establishment – the same people who assured his ascendency to clinch their party’s nomination in 2020 – has caused him to spoil the election in 2024.

Biden’s resentment goes back to 2015 when, after losing his son Beau Biden to cancer, the career politician made clear his intention to run for president. Obama, hand on his shoulder, told him he should “take time to process his grief.” At least that’s the official story. Others (those principally close to Biden) paint radically different picture: one in which a callous Obama quashed Biden’s ambitions by asserting that the party was firmly behind Hillary Clinton – it was her turn, and time for a woman nominee – so, the former VP should stand down.

Still, after being forced out, once again by the so called democratic elites, he is being lauded among Democrats for the apparent sacrifice he has shown in stepping away from the presidential campaign in 2024. In truth, he had dug his heels in until former Speaker of the House of Representatives and Senate Leader Chuck Schumer made it clear that if he didn’t withdraw from the race, he would be forcibly removed by the 25th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States on the grounds of incompetence – and this would shatter any semblance of a legacy he hoped to leave. Now, he leaves a hero but hopefully, when his usefulness has expired, historians will tell the truth about his failed legacy.

Even in 2020, Biden was not the Democrat’s first pick for president. There was a field of some twenty contenders, each trying to prove enthusiastically why they should lead the country. It was a testament to the depth of the Democrat bench, that so many candidates felt ready to take on the most important job in American politics.

Biden was seen as yesterday’s man. In all his time in the Senate, he was seen as a careerist whose ambitions prompted him to author a crime bill that put more African Americans in prison for life than any other in American history. His handling of the Clarence Thomas judicial confirmation while Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee was rife with controversy when he said he believed that Thomas was telling the truth about denying Anita Hill’s sexual harassment allegations. He also prevented other women from testifying at the Senate hearing who could have corroborated professor Thomas, who, a Harvard educated legal scholar, ought to have been a highly credible witness in any reasonable person’s eyes. But not Biden’s.

As Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden was a cheerleader for George W. Bush’s and his neocon cabal’s illegal war on Iraq, though he later denied being a supporter, despite voting for it and appearing on video in strong support of the war. When it became clear that the war effort had not only gone awry but had become a quagmire that had spawned far worse Islamic extremist enemies such as ISIS, Biden proposed a plan to partition Iraq along ethnic lines. He had thought the plan was brilliant, but it reflects his simplistic thinking not having actually talked to a range of stakeholders in Iraq nor anyone in authority in Iraq’s neighbouring countries, most notably Turkey, which has a large Kurdish population (Biden had proposed the creation of Kurdistan). Needless to say, the plan was laughed out of Washington circles as childish and naïve – just another white man drawing borders on a map without demonstrating any sophisticated understanding of the area.

Then there was Biden’s disastrous exit from Afghanistan, which left many US supporters to the Taliban’s clutches and resulted in the deaths of 13 US servicemen. It was a throwback to Biden’s support of the Vietnam withdrawal, which was just as abrupt and ill-thought out.

Then came allegations of sexual misconduct stemming back from the nineties, which essentially killed the #ME TOO movement, dividing left-wing women in two groups: those who wanted to continue to believe women who accused men in power of sexual misdeeds, and those who wanted the Democrats to beat Donald Trump, if Biden became the nominee.

The media went on the offensive, dismissing the accusations as, at best Biden’s old-fashioned and out of date way of interacting with women, and at worst, lies. The most damning accusation came from a Senate intern who worked in Joe Biden’s office in the 1990s soon after the Clarence Thomas hearings. She said that Biden cornered her in a parking garage and digitally penetrated her vagina. Upon being rebuffed, he responded, “I was told you liked me, Man.” The New York Times, while discrediting her allegations as contradictory in one article did note in another that Reade had told her mother, brother and a friend at the time of the alleged crime by Biden, and this lent some corroboration to the accusation. Indeed, A 1996 court document says her ex-husband mentioned that she’d complained of sexual harassment while working in Biden’s office.

Reade filed a criminal complaint with the Washington Metropolitan Police Department in April 2020, after which she claims her life was threatened in 2023, and she fled to Russia to seek protection from the Russian Federation. It was at this time, that she was branded a Russian spy. Prior to this, since she voted for Bernie Saunders in the Democratic primary of 2020, she was accused of making up the story, so her preferred candidate could win.

Saunders didn’t need her help to be the presumptive nominee. He stormed through the Iowa Caucuses, winning handily. Then, victories came in the New Hampshire and Nevada primaries.

Fearing that Saunders would win the nomination (he had come very close and many say was cheated out of the nomination in 2015 by the DNC Chairperson, Debbie Wasserman Schultz – a Clinton supporter who was forced to resign ahead of the Democratic Natinoal Convention for tilting the scales in favour of Clinton) the same ‘elites’ whom Biden decried in 2024 for pressuring him to leave the campaign, coalesced around Biden as the safe moderate candidate with the best chance of beating Donald Trump.

It is a well-known story that Biden was given a list of names of black women from which he was pressurized to choose a running mate in 2020, and Kamala Harris’ name was on that list, despite the fact that she withdrew from the Democratic primary process before a single vote had been cast – and hence, had now proven electoral constituency for the position of president.

He chose her, he said because of the good things that his late son Beau had said about her. The fact is, he could not afford to take the black vote for granted. The support of black in the US were not only key to his winning his first primary contest but also the presidency.

That said, Biden’s policy positions have not always been favourable to blacks. As his running mate pointed out in a debate against him, he had opposed busing to desegregate schools in the South – a position shared by openly racist politicians like Strom Thurmond. He later became the only democrat to attend Thurmond’s funeral and eulogized there.

Biden’s success in the Senate was built upon forging relationships with right wing actors and taking money from credit card companies based in his home state of Delaware. Famously he helped defeat legislation that would have made it easier for students to escape towering credit card debt at a time when MBNA, a credit card company, was among his biggest donors. It is worth noting that this legislation was supported by President Obama. So, he had gone against his own boss to defeat the bill. Indeed, it is indicative of who Biden’s real bosses actually were at the time – the credit card companies.

This brings us to 2022. Biden, who lauds his own record for “having strengthened NATO.” – a euphemism for trying to get Ukraine to join, essentially was responsible for Russia invading the Ukraine. Long considered a “red line” for NATO, his predecessors were walked back from NATO expansionism to Ukraine on fears that it would provoke Russia to attack. This proved to be true when Biden convinced the newly elected former comedian, Vlodomir Zelinsky to lean towards NATO membership, prompting Putin’s aggression.

While Biden is not responsible for starting the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict, ForeignPolicy.com wrote that he has essentially owned it since November, 2023 when he said that there was no going back to the geopolitical status pre-October 7th. His subsequent alliance with Israel, providing weapons, and support at every turn, rejecting ceasefires and the conclusions of the International Criminal Court that both Israeli and Hamas leaders should be prosecuted for war crimes, only burnishes this view.

So, those who say he is a foreign policy ‘expert’ are sorely disproven by his record of recurring failure, resulting in death, destruction, and mayhem. Indeed, in his memoir, former US Defense Secretary under both Presidents Bush and Obama wrote of Biden: “I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

Biden claims to have created the strongest economy in the United States in history. And yet, inflation is at an all time high. The number of people who cannot afford homes has skyrocketed under his administration. And, he has failed to contain the deficit.

As such, Biden has proven to be a failure not only domestically but also internationally.

After two years of whispers about Biden’s cognitive decline, and surreptitious visits to the White House by a Parkinson’s Disease specialist as well as numerous public embarrassments, some in front of other world leaders, the situation could no longer be hidden after the June 27th presidential debate between Trump and Biden.

Biden saw Obama as the chief architect of this movement to remove him. With murmurs that former astronaut and House representative, Mike Kelly touted as a possible replacement with the possibility of Michelle Obama being on the ticket, it was Biden’s turn to quash Obama’s plan by promptly endorsing his Vice-President, Kamala Harris, widely seen to be unpopular and whom Obama regarded as incompetent.

In doing so, Biden, after causing havoc in the United States with his failed policies has managed to spoil the field for aspiring Democrats who might have taken the country in a new direction.

Harris whose ascent in politics has been mired in nepotism and even other unsavoury accusations, had one responsibility as Vice-President: to address the issue of illegal immigration and ‘fix the border.” She responded by never visiting the border once. When NBC news anchor Lester Holt pointed this out, she lied about it – when he repeated that this was, indeed, not true, Harris’ response was a totally illogical and irrelevant statement: “I’ve never been to Europe, either,” she replied.

Harris may indeed beat Trump, though he maintains a thin lead on her nationally and in swing states. But Biden’s endorsement of her is less about her winning than about ensuring that win or lose, Biden’s legacy will be protected. Either she will lose, in which case Biden can claim that pushing him out was wrong – or she will win and serve disastrously, making Biden’s tenure shine in comparison. After a checkered career in politics, Biden’s last act as leader of the Democratic party was to drive a stake through the heart of the party’s aspirations at bright, new, and competent leadership.