From The VG Bookshelf: Fight

Reading a book on recent history is always strange. Didn’t this JUST happen? The book “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House” by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes carries less of the baggage of the Tapper and Thompson “Original Sin” book, but presents plenty of messy and damning information on not just Joe Biden, but the entire Democrat operation that orchestrated the removal of Joe and the installation of Kamala Harris.

And yes, there are plenty of juicy pieces about the inner workings of the Trump campaign as well. But the obvious focus continues to be on the Joe Biden saga, and I don’t see that ending anytime soon. What is interesting about “Fight” is that it very much focuses on the campaigns, and the book opens with The Big Moment – the debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Remember how old Joe challenged Donald Trump to “make his day” and do two debates?

Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020. Since then, he hasn’t shown up for a debate.

Now he’s acting like he wants to debate me again.

Well, make my day, pal. pic.twitter.com/AkPmvs2q4u

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 15, 2024

Anyone with eyeballs should have seen the jump cuts in that video and known that Biden was failing. But it took going on the debate stage on June 27, 2024, for the Democrats to realize that Joe Biden was The Walking Dead. Chapter one of the book begins on that debate night, and the sinking horror that Democrat power players suddenly found themselves confronting live on TV.

Back in Washington, Pelosi’s phone exploded. Messages from alarmed Democrats poured in. She shot a text to Morgan, the donor in Florida. “What are you seeing? What are you thinking?”

“This is a natural disaster playing out before our very eyes,” wrote Morgan, who could be counted on among Biden’s staunchest loyalists. His phone pinged. It was Pelosi again. “John Morgan says this is a disaster.” The text was a mistake. She had intended to send it to her husband. Life was suddenly moving very fast for everyone but Biden, whose brutal night continued to unfold in ruthlessly slow motion. (Chapter 1, “The Quiet Part Out Loud,” pages 8-9)

Chapter one does touch on the obvious decline that Biden was experiences, and the concerted effort by his White House handlers, now coined the “Politburo” by Tapper and Thompson, to keep his condition under wraps. But like Tapper and Thompson, Allen and Parnes find plenty of people who are willing to talk about what they saw in Joe Biden back then – you know, well AFTER the fact. Granted, one of the people they clearly interviewed was former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and we all know that when Republicans spoke up about what they were seeing with Biden, the media either ignored them or ruthlessly went after them. No one wanted the truth, they wanted Donald Trump to not be president. And if that meant pretending that Joe Biden was hunky dory, then that’s what they were going to do. The debate robbed the Democrats and the media of their fig leaf.

From that point on, the wheels are in motion to remove Joe Biden, even if he doesn’t realize it yet. The Democrat fundraisers went into a panic, and that panic spread to House members and senators in re-election battles. The Biden campaign sent out talking points and held conference calls in an attempt to salvage the situation, but the die had been cast. The problem was that Team Biden refused to acknowledge it. A damning anecdote from two days after the debate highlights the fact that Joe could no longer function – the beginning of chapter three tells the story of a fundraiser dinner at New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy’s home, where Biden aides had put down fluorescent tape on the carpet so Joe would know where to walk, explaining that “He knows to look for that.” He also had to use a lectern and a teleprompter at this same fundraising dinner, which had only about 50 people there. Lines were beginning to be drawn within the Democrat party, with the Clintons on one side behind Joe, and Barack Obama quietly on the other side. Meanwhile, Hunter Biden was throwing his weight around within the inner circle, alienating longtime aide Anita Dunn and her lawyer husband, Bob Bauer.

But the DNC was confronted with a larger problem – the primaries had been rigged to protect Joe Biden, and if he stepped down, no one knew what would happen to the delegates (Chapter Four, “An Episode or a Condition”). Obama, having failed to get through to Biden (who maintained a sizeable chip on his shoulder against Obama for picking Hillary Clinton over him in 2016), then turned to Nancy Pelosi for her opinion. Both Obama and Pelosi knew that Harris would be next in line – and neither of them wanted her. In this timeframe, Biden was sitting down for his interview with George Stephanopoulos and informing the Democratic caucus that he was going nowhere. But Biden wasn’t showing up in person to reassure people – he was sending letters and phoning in additional interviews. The proverbial Indiana Jones boulder was already moving to flatten Biden, and the only question was, would it smash the party along with him?

It was Nancy Pelosi who, however carefully she thought she was avoiding the fight, aimed the boulder right at Biden.

A Morning Joe panelist, POLITICO White House bureau chief Jonathan Lemire, put the key question to her succinctly: “Does he have your support to be the head of the Democratic ticket?” Pelosi, garbling her first few words, pivoted. To insiders, that was a clear no. “It’s up to the president to decide if he’s going to run,” she said. “We’re encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short.” The calendar only mattered if he planned to step aside – she clearly feared the window for a mini-primary was closing – and he had just told congressional Democrats, and the rest of the world, that his decision was locked in. As she always did, Pelosi made sure to intersperse praise for Biden. But Lemire reminded Pelosi that Biden insisted he was staying in the race. She responded by repeating her view that it was still an open question. “I want him to do whatever he decides to do,” she said. (Chapter 6, “Et Tu, Nancy?”, pages 90-91)

The Biden campaign was livid.

Biden and his longest-serving aides felt bruised by Obama’s decision to step back from the public fight over his future. But what Pelosi did was different – so out front and inflammatory – and it infuriated the president. He thought he had suffocated the insurrection, and here she was rekindling it – again. “We were hurt by Obama,” said one top Biden adviser. “We were fucking pissed at Pelosi.” (Ibid, page 91)

Chapters seven and eight of the book switch gears to cover the Trump assassination attempt in Butler and the aftermath, along with the announcement of J.D. Vance as Trump’s running mate. But by the time chapter nine rolls around, it is the end for Biden.

But in a rapid cascade, the party faithful, led by elected officials, commentators, and donors, lost confidence in Biden. More than that, they were angry. They did not want to admit that he had deceived them – perhaps deceived himself – about his fitness to run. They did not want to believe that Biden, their savior of the republic, had put ego over party and country. They blamed his staff and family for hiding his frailties. And surely, there were a few innocents in his midst. The psychic blow left most Democrats unwilling to wrestle with the question of whether he remained fit to serve. Only one Democratic member of Congress, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, had publicly suggested Biden should resign his office. Instead, Democrats focused on whether he could win another term.

Biden had lived by the electability sword in 2020. Now Democrats slashed him with it. (Chapter 9, “Karaoke At The End Of The World,” page 123)

By chapter ten, Biden is dropping out and Kamala Harris is taking center stage. When Biden dropped out, Kamala and her team had already started rallying the troops to make sure she could lock up endorsements and the nomination. The most important of those was, of course, Biden himself. Harris, when told by Biden that he was dropping out, insisted on an endorsement in the same tweet that announced he was stepping off the ticket. Biden and his aides eventually said they would send a second tweet to endorse Harris – which they did, about 30 minutes after the announcement.

Harris already had the most important piece in place: Biden. Sure, she was his vice president. And yeah, it would have looked bad to pass over her – hypocritical, even, since he’d been so sore for so long about Obama hanging him out to dry in 2016. Hell, Biden even factored in the party unity aspect: if Democrats picked someone else, they could lose Black voters by the millions. But the most satisfying aspect of his decision had little to do with Harris. “It was a fuck-you to Obama’s plan,” said one person close to both men. “At that moment, you have very few things you control, and that’s one thing he had control over, and he chose to stick it to Obama.” (Chapter 10, “You Need To Endorse Me,” page 149)

At that point, the book becomes a rapid, broad-sweeping sprint to Election Night. There are many a juicy detail embedded in the narrative, and I can highlight a few:

– The Obamas insisted on the cheesy taped video of Kamala Harris taking their phone call to accept their endorsement. (Ibid, pages 164-165)

– There was immediate conflict and infighting for status between the Biden campaign apparatus already in place, and the Harris team. (Chapter 11, “Fuckery,” pages 166-175)

– Tim Walz called Nancy Pelosi to put himself forward as a vice presidential candidate… more than once. (Ibid, pages 176-177)

– Governor Josh Shapiro, who was obviously a strong vice presidential contender, either intentionally or unintentionally, took himself out of the running by telling Harris that “I’m not sure I could be a number two” during his interview. (Ibid, page 180)

– Biden’s final swan song at the DNC on the first night of the convention was a disaster, as protesters had kept delegates from getting in and speeches ran long. His aides were in an absolute fit because Biden’s slot slipped all the way out of primetime. He ended up onstage at 11:25 pm that night. (Chapter 13, “No Daylight, Kid,” pages 200-203)

– Walz, even though he had desperately lobbied to be the vice presidential pick, was absolutely overwhelmed when it came to debate prep and stressed himself out. As viewers will remember, Walz was obviously nervous during the first half of the debate, and by the time most viewers had tuned out, that image was stuck in their minds. (Chapter 15, “The Turn,” pages 234-235)

– Joe Biden kept telling Kamala Harris that he wanted “no daylight” between them. This resulted in her absolute brain freeze, despite having a rehearsed answer, when she went on “The View” and was asked what she would have done differently than Biden. (Chapter 16, “Texas Hold ‘Em,” pages 237-238)

– The ad with the most impact in the campaign was the “Kamala Harris is for they/them; Donald Trump is for you.”

Democrats were at a loss to respond, and the Harris campaign decided that none of their pushback ads were testing well, so there was no rebuttal. This frustrated campaign surrogates like Bill Clinton, and hung heavily in the minds of voters when there was no response. (Ibid, pages 244-245)

– Election Night was stressful for both campaigns, but as things improved for Trump, the Harris campaign scrambled to try and find any path forward. At one point, Kamala asked “Could we be in a recount?” and had to be told no. (Chapter 18, “Just Take The 270,” pages 274-276)

– Kamala really believed that if she had just had more time, she could have won. That is not a perspective held by anyone else that Allen and Parnes interviewed for the book. (Epilogue, “The Aftermath,” pages 288-289)

Is the book worth reading? Only if you are a political junkie who is deeply interested in this kind of book. There is, by necessity, a whole lot of speculation about what the primary players were thinking and feeling, because so many of the sources are anonymous. Allen and Parnes do a decent job at putting together a fast-moving timeline with enough background information to cover June 2024 to January 2025, but this is not a read for a casual looker-on. The campaign infights are interesting to read about, but doesn’t make for appealing reading unless you already know the people involved. In short, the book is good in the moment. Will it have lasting power as a historical reference point for what happened during the 2024 election? Maybe, but really only for the chapters that cover the defenestration of Joe Biden.

Featured image: original Victory Girls art by Darleen Click

The post From The VG Bookshelf: Fight appeared first on Victory Girls Blog.