Joe Biden is going nowhere of his own volition.
If the extent to which the president was dug in was not clear over the holiday weekend, the president sure made it clear Monday in a stunner of a letter to congressional Democrats paired with a call-in to MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” thus firing his cannon of defiance at both the insiders and the vox populi, or so he and his defenders hoped.
The rhetoric of the letter left no room whatsoever for a graceful departure or change of mind due to evolving personal circumstances. It allowed for no caveats. It suggested nary a hint of doubt in (Team) Biden’s mind. There was some minor sop to having “heard” concerns, but then the letter illegitimized them and blasted them away, even going so far as to imply said concerns were really about the high stakes in the overall election itself rather than the mental health and aptitude of Biden, which we all know to be the actual reality.
“I feel a deep obligation to the faith and trust voters have placed in me to run this year. It was their decision to make,” Biden wrote, referencing his selection in what passed for a Democratic primary. “Not the press, not the pundits, not the big donors, not any selected group of individuals, no matter how well intentioned. The voters — and the voters alone — decide the nominee of the Democratic Party. How can we stand for Democracy in our nation if we ignore it in our own party? I cannot do that. I will not do that.”
So, in Biden land, that’s an end to that. If Biden ends up at the conclusion of this crisis not running for re-election as president, it will not be of his own choosing. Given the above verbiage, along with far more besides but entirely of a piece, there will also be no way to spin it otherwise.