Nancy Pelosi in 2018. Photo: Gage Skidmore, Openverse
Nancy Pelosi in 2018. Photo: Gage Skidmore, Openverse
Nobody will ever know exactly what happened to ultimately change Joe Biden’s mind about running, but Nancy Pelosi’s fingerprints were all over the scene of the switch.
Republished with permission from D. Earl Stephens
Five weeks ago, I was typing with my hair on fire defending Joe Biden with every fiber of my being, and with every loud adjective I could slam on paper. I was driving full steam to his rallies, and spilling my guts to anybody who would listen.
Joe Biden was our candidate, dammit. Time to move on.
He beat the horrible, America-attacking Donald Trump once, and he was going to do it again. One terrible debate performance wasn’t about to change my stubborn mind about that.
The folks who were calling on Biden to step down were nothing but rocks in the road, and doing everything in their misguided power to make the path to November an unnecessarily bumpy one. Besides, that was the job the incompetent, clickbait mainstream media.
We needed to unify but quick, or we would be staring right down the barrel of 2016 all over again, and just how in the hell had we allowed ourselves to get THERE again?
Sleep was coming hard and my diverticulitis was flaring up to the point where it literally became hard to walk. How, just four months from the most important election of our lives, were we still throwing haymakers at ourselves instead of the anti-American Republican bastards who deserved it?
I fired off what I hoped would be a final volley on Sunday, July 21, ending all the talk about replacing Biden on the ticket. Literally five minutes after I published that piece, he announced he’d be stepping down.
I felt terrible sadness, but I also felt an odd sense of relief. I was past sick and tired of spending all my time defending my candidate on the Left, instead of attacking the evil on the Right.
An hour or so later, I learned that Joe’s choice to replace him, Kamala Harris, was going to be in Milwaukee two days later to try to rally the troops, and would I be there.
Would I be there? Are you kidding???
The place was on fire that day, and there was a beautiful feeling of hope in the air. There were 3,000 strong crammed into the West Allis High School gym that Tuesday afternoon, but that number could have been doubled without breaking a sweat.
Mothers, fathers, daughters and sons all filed into the place, heads high. Wisconsin’s finest. Warriors all. We had been doing our part to right the wrongs of 2016, and winning elections all over this state.
We weren’t going back …
She can win we said to ourselves as we filled the place to overflowing.
She WILL win we said as we walked out on a cloud …
Everything was suddenly different.
I’ll go to my grave believing Joe Biden would have won if he stayed in the race, but four weeks ago I was dying of worry. I still am, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a helluva lot more comfortable right now.
There’s a feeling in the air …
Nobody will ever know exactly what happened to ultimately change Joe’s mind, but Nancy Pelosi’s fingerprints were all over the scene of the switch.
The most powerful politician in the world the past 20 years, made it as clear as mud following the infamous debate that she didn’t think Biden was our best bet to beat the despicable Trump. There might be people who respect Pelosi as much as I do, but nobody respects her more, so her tepid support for Biden hit me as odd … and hard.
If she wasn’t all in then she knew many others weren’t either. And nobody, I mean NOBODY, can count votes like Nancy Pelosi. So Joe stepped down, and Nancy caught a lot of flak for it.
She still is.
Like I said, nobody knows for sure what pushed Joe to make the decision he did, but Pelosi no doubt had as much to do with it as anybody to make sure he made it the right one.
Sure, it was messy. Sure it would have been nice if Pelosi joined Biden for tea on the patio of the Rose Garden, and he came around to her thinking. Then they could have had a tight, little press conference announcing to the world, that after a sweet chat, they were total buds now, and Joe would be stepping aside for the good of the party.
Except politics are not a smooth roll in the best of times, and certainly not when Democracy and the future of America are hanging in the balance.
So Pelosi ran cover for presidents Obama and Clinton, who were also muted in their support for Joe. Either one of these powerful men could have weighed in and given Biden the rousing endorsement that would have slammed the door shut on any talk of replacing him.
They didn’t.
I had two sources close to Obama telling me he wanted Joe out. So Pelosi injected herself into the fray, and did what she has always done:
SHE HANDLED THIS.
Tonight this great woman will be speaking at the Democratic National Convention that is but one day away from formally putting Kamala Harris forward as our candidate for the President of the United States of America.
I’ll be listening closely to what she has to say.
Everything has changed since the day we filled that gym in Milwaukee. Harris is drawing record crowds everywhere she goes. Money, the lifeblood of any campaign, is pouring in like a waterfall, and those damn polls are trending up.
We are miles better off than we were last month, and that is in large part to Speaker Pelosi’s political instincts and incredible power.
Politics is a blood sport, and winning is everything.
“Winning an election is a decision,” Pelosi said. “You make a decision to win and then you make every decision in favor of winning. America deserves a better tomorrow today.”
Things are a helluva lot better today, and our way forward over the next 76 days is a helluva lot brighter now.
I guess there are still some folks in the Democratic Party denying this, and aren’t happy with Pelosi for what she did and how she allegedly did it. I’d politely suggest they get their lights checked.
Me? I admit I was wrong, and that’s as clear as day to me now.
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