The night of the assassination attempt against President Trump, I tweeted my prediction that President Biden would resign pretty quickly. A week later, on Sunday afternoon, he put out a statement that he was withdrawing from the presidential race. Mind you, in biblical vernacular, I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but it seemed pretty clear to me that things were about to change drastically.
I got the time wrong by just a bit; my guess was 48 hours, and it was instead a week. I missed the details just a bit; he did not resign, but he did withdraw from the race. And if you want my not-quite-a-prophet prognostication on what will happen now, here it is:
I don’t have a clue.
My gut tells me that the Democrat party will rally pretty quickly around Vice President Harris; I don’t see any way they could do otherwise without risking charges of racism if they pick someone like Hillary Clinton over her or sexism if they tap someone like Gavin Newsom. But it could also potentially be Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, former first lady Michelle Obama, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer or a popular singer or actor or business person or some unknown guy from Des Moines. There has not been a situation like this since before my time, 1952, to be exact.
President Biden’s manner of withdrawing has been interesting as well, coming indirectly through social media rather than a personal appearance, and that kind of thing is like gasoline on the fire of any conspiracy theorist’s wildest dream.