He Isn’t Stepping Down
Progressives “feel” they are creating a better world, something like a paradise on Earth. People using government power to solve all problems don’t give up that power.
Barring some catastrophic medical or other emergency, Joe Biden won’t be stepping down before the November general election. Even if he experiences some debilitating medical crisis—such as a paralyzing stroke—he might still not step down.
Jill Biden shows many signs of being another Edith Wilson. If Edith Wilson—wife of President Woodrow Wilson—could conceal her husband’s stroke and control what information the President received and who was permitted to see him, why can’t Jill Biden?
There is, after all, a long tradition of Democratic wives married to Presidents lying about and actively covering up big problems with their husbands.
Hillary Clinton infamously launched smear campaigns against the women who were brave enough to speak about being sexually harassed or raped by Bill Clinton, doing everything within her power to shut down and silence the women her husband molested.
Eleanor Roosevelt went to great lengths to conceal FDR’s paralysis from polio and later lied to Americans about his chronic heart failure and other medical problems preceding his death in 1945. According to Eleanor, her husband was a model of fitness, perfectly capable of being re-elected and remaining President.
Edith Wilson—who was never elected to any office or position—assumed many of President Woodrow Wilson’s duties after his incapacitating stroke, leading historians to refer to her role as the “secret Presidency.”
Would Jill Biden do something similar? Maybe. She certainly has much to lose if her husband is no longer President. More likely, however, Joe Biden will simply refuse to step aside in the months between now and November.
Understanding Human Nature and History
I have no special insider information. I don’t know any secrets circulating among Biden family members, crony friends, and the President’s fellow oligarchs.
I can predict that Joe Biden will not step down with confidence simply because I understand human nature, I know human history, and, in particular, I have been studying progressive politicians like Joe Biden for most of my adult life (which, again, is only a fraction of the time old Joe has been hustling and dealing within the halls of political power).
Think it through for yourself: Joe Biden is an old crony.
He’s certainly old. There’s no debate about that fact. For perspective, I am no longer a young man—I’m now in my mid-50s—and Joe Biden has been in government as long as I’ve been alive.
This is me—yours truly—when I was 8 or 9 years old. At that time, Joe Biden was already in his second term as a United States Senator.
He was in government when I started kindergarten; he was in government when I was in high school; he was in government when I went to college and graduate school; he was in government when I received my Ph.D.; he was in government when my children were born, when I got my first puppy, when I had to put down that same dog because he became old and sick, when I wrote my first book, and when I accepted my first full-time teaching position.
This is also me, at either 12 or 13 years old, playing for the greatest rec league summer baseball team ever assembled in Hays, KS. And, Joe Biden at this time would’ve been in his third term in the U.S. Senate.
Joe Biden is still in government today, living off productive taxpayers and the debt he is imposing on your children and grandchildren.
My parents came to visit me in California in 2004. This is a photo taken during that trip. It’s my dad and I in Santa Barbara, CA. That was twenty years ago, in 2004, and Joe Biden had already been elected and re-elected six times to the Senate. He was an old, establishment crony politician when this photo was taken—and I had a full head of hair it was so long ago!
Throughout my entire life, not much has remained constant. But one thing has: Joe Biden has been wielding government power from the moment I took my first breath to now.
Along the way, he has also signed off on multiple pieces of legislation—sometimes being so dishonest as to call it “campaign finance reform”—that make it nearly impossible for anyone who is not among the established incumbent elite progressive political class to effectively challenge someone who is.
Joe Biden is also a crony. From his immediate family members to wider circles of friends and business associates, look at all the people connected to Joe Biden who have done nothing productive, inventive, or innovative, yet live lifestyles of the rich and famous simply because of political favors doled out by the lifetime politician to whom they are close.
Cronyism and Its Implications
Entrepreneurs have to be productive and create real value for other people. The crony family members and friends around Joe Biden don’t need to do either. They can sell access to someone who holds the reins of government: Joe Biden. That’s cronyism in its purest form.
Those crony family members and friends definitely don’t want old Joe to retire or step down. He’s their gravy train, their sugar daddy, their ticket to waivers, exemptions, contracts, subsidies, and all kinds of perks reserved for those who are politically connected (such as highly paid board seats within state-controlled foreign gas companies in nations receiving U.S. aid doled out by Joe Biden in person).
Given his obvious mental decline, the crony moochers around Joe Biden likely have more influence and sway over his choices than ever before. What’s he going to do, after all? Counter their arguments? Deny their requests? Say no? The man can barely speak a coherent sentence at this point, and it’s clear sometimes he has no idea where he is or what he is doing.
Progressive Obsession with Power
There’s one reason, above all others, why Joe Biden will not step down from any political office, ever: He’s a progressive.
For progressives, nothing is greater, nothing is more important, than controlling government power and directing the government’s monopoly on legalized force.
Being part of government and exercising that power and control over other people—including fellow citizens—for progressives, is more important than God, family, friends, one’s own health, and one’s own honor, combined.
Progressives are social engineers. They are central planners. They are experts at spending other people’s money while shaming those same others for being selfish.
Progressives “feel” that they are creating a better world, something like a future paradise on Earth, which, for them, justifies all the things they do to other people. People using government power to create Heaven on Earth don’t give up government power. They just don’t.
The Ruth Bader Ginsburg Precedent
A decade ago, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was already old, over 80. She was sick. President Obama and those close to him begged her to retire from the Supreme Court.
Obama was a progressive Democrat. The United States Senate was controlled by progressive Democrats. If Justice Ginsburg had retired, Obama could have nominated another progressive Democrat to succeed her and Senate Democrats would have confirmed that nominee.
What, then, was the rub?
Ginsburg, like Biden (and Obama), was a progressive. For Ginsburg, too, nothing was greater, nothing more important, than controlling government power and directing the government’s monopoly on legalized force. Ginsburg clung to government power until her last gasping breath, literally. Nothing on Earth or in Heaven was more important to her than her government job.
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Clinging to her government position until death.
As a result, she will go down in history as a Supreme Court judge so obsessed with government power that her refusal to retire—in her 80s!—resulted in a Republican President having the opportunity to nominate three justices to the highest court, all of whom were confirmed by the Senate.
Like Ginsburg, Biden is a progressive. From his perspective, nothing on Earth nor in Heaven could possibly be more important than his government job. Government is to Joe Biden what the one ring is to Gollum: Ultimate power. The source of all meaning and purpose. The highest good above which there is nothing. The thing worth sacrificing all else, if necessary.
In the words of Gollum: My precious.
The difference is that The Lord of the Rings is fiction. Gollum’s grotesque appearance, schizophrenia, and paranoia are made up to dramatize the zealous obsession with power. In Biden’s case, it’s not fiction at all. It’s all-too-real, all-too-human.
Will Joe Biden willingly relinquish the levers of government power? No more than Gollum would agreeably relinquish the ring of power.
American Progressivism
American-style progressivism holds that government is responsible for all the good things people want and need—food, clothing, education, housing, healthcare, mental stability, friends, community, purpose, meaning, truth…everything.
According to progressivism, all these things come, directly or indirectly, from government. This is why progressive government gets involved with every area of human life, with all kinds of human activities.
This is why everything is now politicized: because progressive government now regulates or subsidizes everything. It is now impossible to have a discussion about any subject without the discussion becoming political.
The progressive premise—that government provides all human goods—fuels progressives with a sense of moral righteousness, often bordering on an arrogant holier-than-thou attitude.
Ordinary progressives—and especially progressive elites—assume that when they enforce their agenda, they are somehow helping you. A progressive like Joe Biden likely believes, genuinely, that he is making you better by forcing you to subsidize his progressive spending programs and accept the progressive cultural norms he promotes.
The Progressive Mission
Even Gollum recognized that there was something devilishly seductive, and likely evil, about the ring he desired above all else. But for progressives like Joe Biden, they never pause long enough to question whether government power—which is their ring—is seductive or evil.
They never look at the actual, miserable results of their own progressive programs and cultural movements. They simply assume everything progressives support must be good, wise, and beneficial.
This means that Joe Biden, as a progressive, is obsessed with government power and believes the mission he is promoting is morally right, if not righteous. Such a person is not going to step down from office.
All the concerns raised by his fellow Democrats, by opposing Republicans, by ordinary citizens, and by global leaders, mean nothing compared to holding the reins of power, even if he can neither stand on his own nor speak clearly enough to be understood.
Conclusion
This is why I predict Joe Biden will not step down. He will not resign from the Presidency before the end of his first term. He will not announce that he is unable to serve again after this current term expires.
He will keep going.
Like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I predict Joe Biden will cling to the levers of power until his last breath because he cannot imagine anything more important than his government job.
If I end up being wrong in my prediction, I am not too proud to admit I was wrong. I will eat crow if time demonstrates the opposite of what I am predicting. I don’t think it will. We shall soon see, one way or the other.