It's Official: Obama Endorses Biden For President

by JASmius



When the Troll speaks, everybody listens:

A close White House insider tells Ed Klein Confidential that top presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett has given the thumbs up sign to the Joe Biden-for-president movement.

According to this source, Jarrett personally approved the decision of Steve Schale — a leading Democrat strategist — to join the Draft Biden 2016 super PAC.

Schale will help organize key early States, including Iowa and New Hampshire, and be the public face of the growing movement to persuade the vice president to throw his hat into the ring.

"Obviously this isn't happening without the approval of Barack Obama," said the source. "The president, Valerie and Michelle Obama have decided that Hillary is no longer inevitable, and that the best alternative is Joe.

"Their decision is meant to send a signal to Democrats that Joe's the man and that everybody should line up behind him.

Hmm; I guess that get-together last week at Martha's Vineyard didn't go as fabulously as La Clinton Nostra expected.



Still, this story has the feel of something out of the Onion to my ears.  Historically, failed presidential candidates don't get two bites at the proverbial apple, much less three of them.  His national reputation as a crazy old uncle in the attic, a joke, a jester in the Obama court hardly gives Slow Joe the kind of gravitas Americans would presumably be looking for in times as perilous and bleak as his boss has bequeathed us (Of course, the rise of Trumpmania kind of depressingly debunks that argument, so your mileage may vary).  He could never win, in other words, any more than could Hillary or Weekend Bernie.  That Obama declaration of martial law and canceling the 2016 election is looking like a better and better bet with each passing day.

But there is one passage from the story that leaped out at my astigmatic eyes like a gamma ray burst:

"The Obamas like him and trust him. He is always on message and they privately believe they would still hold a set of keys to the White House during a Biden presidency. [emphasis added]

Bingo.  A ventriloquist act, in other words.  Biden would sit in the Big Chair, but O would have his hand up President Rogaine's ass, pulling his strings.  A figureheadship, maybe with Julian Castro as Slow Joe's veep, and then the Big Handoff takes place in 2020.

I suspected the same thing - a scheme to stay in office for more than two terms - from Bill Clinton in the runup to 2000.  I figured he would point to his sky-high approval rating as a de facto plebiscite and declare that it was the "will of the people" that he stay on at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue indefinitely.  In the end, it turned out to be Al Gore's post-election bloodless coup attempt to sue his way to the White House that he had not won at the ballot box.  This blessing of the "Draft Biden" movement smells conspicuously similar.

God willing, it will have the same fruitless result.