The 25th Amendment?

Let's delve a little farther into the 25th Amendment, or at least the part that's most applicable to the current crisis, Section 4:

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide[.]

It goes on to provide that should there be a continued disagreement between the president and the vice president-plus-cabinet-majority, it's to be resolved by a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress. This is an even higher standard than required to impeach a president, which requires just a simple majority in the House and a two-thirds majority in the Senate. As a practical matter, the 25th Amendment can't be invoked unless it's in the most extreme cases, for which at least for now, Joe's infirmities likely don't qualify.

This didn't stop House Speaker Johnson from trying to start the process:

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday that high-level discussions should be taking place in President Biden’s cabinet about invoking the 25th Amendment to make him step down after a disastrous debate performance the night before.

“There’s a lot of people asking about invoking the 25th Amendment right now, because this is an alarming situation,” Johnson (R-La.) told reporters. “Our adversaries see the weakness in this White House, as we all do.”

For now, this is just kabuki, but there's nevertheless legitimate reason for concern:

Joe fell apart last night, and he was only facing his American opponent for president armed with nothing but insults. Putin, Xi, Kim, the Ayatollahs, and all our adversaries have real weapons and a desire not just to take away Joe's nice home, helicopter, and the best private jet in the world. They want to reshape the map of the world and are willing to kill thousands or millions to accomplish that task.

Or this:

Put yourself in Xi Jinping's head. Or the Ayatollahs'. Or any adversary of the United States.

What did you see? Did you see an American president that you should beware of? A united America capably led? A country to respect?

Or this:

If I’m China, I’m taking off the shelf the war plans to invade Taiwan. If I’m Iran, I’m breaking out towards a nuclear weapon. If I’m Putin, I’m doubling down on Ukraine and possibly other former Soviet satellites. Can you imagine an emergency situation where immediate military decisions that only a president can make need to be made in seconds or minutes, and the military having to go to diminished Joe for a decision?

This is serious stuff. This is no joke. Biden’s cognitive decline is a national security threat of the highest order.

It doesn't necessarily follow that if Joe isn't fit to run for another term, he isn't fit to continue as president now, but the two issues are nevertheless hard to separate, although either scenario, Joe just drops out of the race, or he quits the presidency now, is pretty much wishful thinking. He won't do either voluntarily, and the possibilities of either selecting a replacement candidate at the Democrat convention or invoking the 25th Amendment are far distant.

In addition, following yesterday's media calls for Joe to drop out of the race, both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton have announced their support for Joe, which indicates that at least for now, there won't be any delegations of power players heading to the Oval Office to tell him how it's gonna be.

The reason the establishment is holding off is that the alternatives are still worse. If Joe voluntarily withdraws as a candidate in November but serves out his term, it simply resurrects the problem Joe's nomination in 2020 was meant to solve: I hold with the view that the Democrat establishment allowed his nomination then because the alternative was Bernie Sanders. Sanders's nomination would have split the party, which has been increasingly dominated by the far left, and ensured Trump's reelection.

The problem for the Democrats is that nothing has changed, Joe is still the only figure who can conceivably keep the party, such as it's become, more or less united. If he withdraws as a candidate but serves out his term, the big problem is how they replace Kamala, his presumptive successor, with anyone who isn't at least notionally a person of color. Any attempt to nominate someone who isn't would permanently split the party, and any nominee who is would almost certainly lose.

If Joe leaves the presidency before his term ends, Kamala automatically becomes president, and replacing her as the nominee becomes all the more difficult, so as a practical matter, as long as Joe hasn't literally flatlined, he's going to stay on as president. But all either contingency accomplishes is to defer the bigger questions for a few days, a few weeks, or a few months. Even if Joe manages to be reelected, the Democrats still have the basic problem that the far left is their dominant faction, and Joe is the last figurehead who can conceal that.

It does look as if, now that Barack Obama and Bill Clinton have publicly supported Joe, the current panic will subside. But let's keep in mind that, as I've been pointing out all along, this year's campaign is many months longer than usual. The crisis for the Trump campaign in 2016, the Access Hollywood tape, was a classic October surprise that in fact took place in early October. There were calls for Trump to withdraw and be replaced by his running mate, Mike Pence. But however reluctantly, the Republican establishment closed ranks, re-expressed support for Trump, and he went on to win the 2016 election.

But that was October 2016. This is June 2024. Trump was able to overcome one October surprise with too little time left in the campaign for the Democrats to find another one. Now, Biden is struggling to overcome a serious setback of his own making with four full months left in the campaign. It's hard not to recognize that he's already tired, but he has many more months to go in a campaign that's going to do nothing but tire him out more.

He's going to have more bad days, and the campaign is going to have to address each one as it arises -- but at least for now, he isn't going to do anything voluntarily, and the Democrat establishment is unlikely to force him out. For both sides, the alternative is worse.

Should an actual crisis arise, conditions might change, but in fact, there's only four months until the election, and any foreign bad actor would need to contend with, first, the likelihood that any Pearl Harbor-style attack would ensure Trump's election, followed by a response from the awakened US sleeping giant; and second, that Biden's remaining term, irrespective of his weakened state, is too short to let the bad actor consolidate any initial victory, and again, all it would do is ensure Trump's election, now looking more likely in any case, and make him mad. I don't think anyone is going to tickle the dragon's tail at this stage.