The Real Unspoken Constitutional Crisis

Yesterday I referred once again to the UK constitutional crisis of 1936, when rumors of Edward VIII's intent to marry the twice-divorced Wallis Simpson were all over US, Canadian, and Australian papers, but there was a taboo against mentioning it in the UK press -- at least until some remarks by an obscure Church of England bishop were interpreted as the Establishment giving "permission" to bring it up publicly, although it had been a full-blown crisis behind the scenes for months. Edward abdicated within a week of the UK papers finally picking it up.

Greg Gutfeld, one of the most insightful commentators lately, referred last night as I did yesterday to the Wall Street Journal story of Joe faltering behind the scenes as a "permission slip" to talk openly about a smiliar constitutional crisis. At 4:30:

Now, is it news that Biden's a mess? No. We hear it every time he opens his mouth and the moths fly out. The White House doctor can pump him full of the leftovers from Hunter's desk, but they can't make him younger. Twenty-five years ago he was a plagiarist, but now he can't summarize the plot from See Spot Run.

But why put this story out now? Well, the piece was timed for this moment. It offered the green light for Wall Street, donors, billionaires, bosses, and normies who normally would not say they vote Trump, but to do so now. It tells them they don't need to vote for Joe. They are saying wink, wink, you can admit Joe stinks. . . or get angry when someone notices there is something very wrong with Biden that can't be cured with ice cream.

The message is it's not just your imagination, Grandpa really is fading fast. The only people imagining things are the ones telling you he's fine. They don't have the old man's best interest at heart, they just cling to power the way he's clinging to life. So this article is a permission slip you can pull out when anybody says, "But Trump is a convicted felon!" You simply say, "So?"

I think we've had a constitutional crisis that's so far been unspoken, but even if the Wall Street Journal is finally giving us the OK to talk about it, it's still skirting the real issue. An unnamed pool reporter did mention the real problem over a week ago:

“President Biden, will you be serving your full four-year term or handing over power to Vice President [Kamala] Harris,” the reporter asked.

“Are you OK? Are you all right?” replied Biden.

The pair struggled to hear each other over background noise.

The journalist repeated his question: “All four years or handing over?”

“You’re not hurt are you? I said are you OK? Did you fall on your head or something?” Biden cracked, before turning to Democratic lawmakers standing next to him.

Biden's replies, "Are you OK? Did you fall on your head or something?" aren't just "snippy", as they've been characterized; they carry a hint of menace. If you keep this up, you definitely won't be OK. When I first heard of Dr Steven Lomazow's books on Franklin Roosevelt's real medical condition, which had caused a similar unspoken constitutional crisis in 1944 when insiders recognized FDR wouldn't complete a fourth term, I was instinctively drawn to order one (FDR's Deadly Secret can be found inexpensively on used book sites), because I sensed a parallel.

The signs we're seeing almost daily, including Joe's embarrassing performance at the D-Day commemoration this week, make it more and more clear that Joe won't complete a second term. In fact, Dr Lomazow's findings suggest that the extent of Joe's health problems is being glossed over or concealed almost as much as Roosevelt's in the months before his death.

But the Democrat insiders in 1944 saw the issue clearly enough to force Roosevelt to drop Henry Wallace as vice president and replace him with a more credible candidate, who turned out to be Truman, by far the best choice that anyone could have made, when Wallace, whom FDR preferred to keep, would have been a disaster. The problem in 2024 is that Kamala Harris is this year's Henry Wallace, and nobody is going to replace her.

There are continuing calls from people like Joe Klein, Ezra Klein, Bill Maher, and Nate Silver for Joe to step down -- just this past Wednesday, Joe Klein wrote,

If Biden were to stand down, a vigorous young candidate—don’t ask me who—could win over the country with a single convention speech (as the aforementioned Obama did in 2004) and then roar to victory over a scattered, feral, felonious and dysfunctional Trump. Biden would seem ancient news by November.

David Axelrod calls this sort of thing a "fantasy", and the biggest part of it is the fantasy that Kamala Harris would simply sit quietly and stay on the ticket as vice president with a new party savior at the top. Kamala was chosen by Biden in 2020 as a concession to the Democrat far left and a message that should Joe not complete a term, his successor would be another far-left catspaw just as Joe has been. These conditions haven't changed, and Kamala as president would represent approval from the very top of the anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic wing of the Democrats. And that wing would never countenance a young, dynamic white Democrat who'd live another eight years and keep Kamala from succeeding to the office.

I think pro-Israel US megadonors have been among the earliest to recognize this problem: on one hand, Joe hasn't been a friend of Israel, but Kamala would be far worse -- and if Joe wins in 2024, we'll likely get Kamala well before 2028. The fact that megadonors are waking up to this is a big part of Trump's fundraising surge.

That's the real issue. As Trump donors and voters look toward winning in November, we've still got the problem of Joe remaining in office through January 2025 as his condition rapidly deteriorates. The question of who will win in November is increasingy moot, but we have a continuing crisis of what looks to be an unstable de facto interregnum between now and Inauguration Day, especially if Kamala succeeds Joe before then.