Constitutional Crisis

In light of Dean Phillips's truth-telling blurt that I talked about yesterday, Special Counsel Hur's remarks on Joe's mental state in his report on Biden's handling of classified documents suggests Washington insiders have been concealing a crisis for some time. In fact, it's beginning to shape up as a full-blown constitutional crisis.

The closest parallel I can think of is the crisis in the UK over Edward VIII's wish to marry Wallis Simpson, which came to a head throughout 1936. According to Wikipedia,

It is generally accepted that Wallis Simpson and Edward became lovers in 1934, while Lady Furness (who was also in a relationship with the prince) was visiting relatives in the United States. However, Edward adamantly insisted to his father, King George V, that he was not physically intimate with Simpson and that it was inappropriate to describe her as his mistress. . . . Edward and Simpson were secretly followed by members of the Metropolitan Police Special Branch, who produced reports on the nature of their relationship and their investigations into Wallis Simpson's private life that included the "pursuit of vicious gossip" and the identification of a "secret lover". The prospect of having an American divorcée with a questionable past having such sway over the heir apparent led to anxiety among government and establishment figures.

In the summer of [1936], the King eschewed the traditional prolonged stay at Balmoral in favour of a holiday with Simpson in the eastern Mediterranean that was widely covered in the American and continental European press, but not by the British press, which maintained a self-imposed silence. Nevertheless, Canadians and expatriate Britons, who had access to the foreign reports, were largely scandalised by the coverage.

By October, it was rumoured in high society and abroad that Edward intended to marry Simpson as soon as she was free to do so. At the end of that month, the crisis came to a head when she filed for divorce and the American press announced that marriage between her and the King was imminent. The King's private secretary, Alec Hardinge, wrote to him on 13 November, warning: "The silence in the British Press on the subject of Your Majesty's friendship with Mrs Simpson is not going to be maintained ... Judging by the letters from British subjects living in foreign countries where the Press has been outspoken, the effect will be calamitous."

In other words, the UK press kept the whole issue quiet, despite it being general knowledge among the elites and widely reported in the foreign press. Back to Wikipedia,

[T]he British press remained quiet on the subject until Alfred Blunt, Bishop of Bradford, gave a speech to his diocesan conference on 1 December, which alluded to the King's need of divine grace: "We hope that he is aware of his need. Some of us wish that he gave more positive signs of his awareness." The press took this for the first public comment by a notable person on the crisis and it became front-page news on 3 December. When asked about it later, however, the bishop claimed he had not heard of Simpson at the time he wrote the speech, and that it was an expression of disappointment at the King's conspicuous failure to attend church services regularly [cough, cough]. Acting on the advice of Edward's staff, Simpson left Britain for the south of France two days later in an attempt to escape intense press attention.

Events unrolled quickly thereafter, with Edward abdicating a week afer Simpson's departure, on December 10. If nothing else, this is an indication of how important it was for the establishment to keep the secret, and how quickly the crisis had to be solved when it was revealed. The combination of Rep Phillips, a Democrat stalwart, tweeting, "But shame on all of you pretending everything is ok. You are leading us - and him - into a disaster, and you damn well know it," followed two days later by the revelations in the Hur report, strikes me as very close to the bishop's invocation of Edward's need for divine grace -- both seem to have blown the lid off the secret.

At this point, the reaction in the establishment press has been stunned silence. YouTube seems to be throttling comments on the issue as well. Only on the right, at least so far, have we been getting intelligent assessments of what these revelations mean. For instance, at Front Page Magazine:

If there are any two things that a man ought to remember, it’s when his son died and when he ascended to the vice presidency and when he became a private citizen again.

Now a man so far gone that he does not know either one has his finger on the nuclear button.

There have been many defenses of Biden’s state made in the past. We have been told that he misspeaks because he has a problem with stuttering or that he’s prone to making up stories, but neither one explains the sheer scale and persistence of the problem which extends well beyond confusing deceased former German chancellor Helmut Kohl and former chancellor Angela Merkel or former French president François Mitterrand and Emmanuel Macron, the sitting president, as he did this week, which might be understandable if that was all there was to it.

Biden is forgetting things that no normal person in their right state of mind loses track of.

Republican Rep Rep. Claudia Tenney wrote to Attorney General Garland, arguing in part,

“It is incumbent upon you to explore proceedings to remove the President pursuant to the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution,” she wrote. “President Biden needs to be charged, or he needs to be removed. There is no middle ground.”

NBC reported,

The Hur report strips away the defenses that Biden’s press operation has used to protect him and raises fresh doubts about whether Biden is up to the rigors of the presidency, Democratic strategists said in interviews.

“This is beyond devastating,” said another Democratic operative, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk candidly about Biden’s shortcomings. “It confirms every doubt and concern that voters have. If the only reason they didn’t charge him is because he’s too old to be charged, then how can he be president of the United States?”

Asked if Hur’s report changes the calculus for Democrats who expect Biden to be the party’s nominee, this person said: “How the f--- does it not?”

Another Biden ally called it “the worst day of his presidency.”

Speaker Johnson remarked after Joe's impromptu press conference,

"The President’s press conference this evening further confirmed on live television what the Special Counsel report outlined. He is not fit to be President," House Speaker Mike Johnson declared in response to the episode. The Speaker of the House is third in line for the presidency, positioned only behind the vice president in the order of precedence.

It's hard to avoid thinking this is a constitutional crisis on the order of the one in the UK over Edward VIII. My current estimate is that it will hasten Joe's withdrawal from the 2024 race in fairly short order, but there will be other developments as well.