Dark Brandon Is Coming Back

Voter: We need Dark Brandon back

President Biden: Dark Brandon is coming back

Voters: *burst into applause* pic.twitter.com/fBPL01ReeK

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) July 7, 2024

So the latest we hear is that Joe has written a letter to congressional Democrats this morning saying it's time to end talk of his withdrawing. This comes as reports from last week indicate that his inner circle of advisers has shrunk to Hunter, Dr Jill, and the Rasputin-like Anthony Bernal. Bernal, who as we've seen often represents himself to the rest of the White House staff as speaking for "the family", seems to be behind reports that the family blames staff for his poor performance in the June 27 debate.

Meanwhile, the New York Post reports that

A senior White House official who has worked with President Biden since his days as vice president reportedly joined the growing chorus of calls urging him against running for reelection.

That unnamed official, described as working with Biden, 81, throughout his vice presidency, 2020 campaign and presidency explained to the New York Times that observing him in private and during travels together made clear that the Democrat doesn’t have what it takes to defeat Donald Trump.

This sent me searching for possible names. Among those mentioned as helping with his debate prep, Anita Dunn and her husband, Bob Bauer, come to mind, but both worked for Obama for only brief periods, and the same applies to their work in the Biden White House. A better candidate might be Mike Donilon. According to Wikipedia,

Between 2009 and 2013,he served as Counselor to Vice President Biden in the Obama administration. Before his White House appointment, Donilon worked with the vice-presidential candidate to help him prepare for the debates and as a traveling advisor.

Donilon became a Senior Advisor to the President at the start of Joe's term in January 2021. Another possibility could be Ron Klain, who was Joe's Chief of Staff as vice president from 2009 to 2011 and his Chief of Staff as president from 2021 to 2023. However, he didn't work with Joe "throughout his vice presidency" as Donilon did, and although he returned to help Biden prepare for the June 27 debate, he hasn't worked in the White House since he left last year. Nevertheless, this piece in Newsweek by Ladan Rafii outlines the overall problem for anyone who's advised Joe:

When it comes to Biden, the only close adviser I once knew is his former White House chief of staff and trusted confidant, Ron Klain.

You see, I attended Georgetown University with him many years ago, and we took the same course in U.S. politics. There weren't that many of us, so we were in a small classroom sitting in close proximity to one another.

. . . I was impressed (if not amazed) by his level of intellect. Time and time again, in every class we had, he revealed this to us—without any arrogance, but with a measure of confidence that made us all take note of him.

. . . Which is why I'm having such difficulty believing and processing what happened just a few nights ago.

I learned from a New York Times report that Ron left the White House last year to become chief legal officer of Airbnb. I wondered about that. Knowing how smart he was, I thought maybe he no longer wanted to be associated with what he perceived to be a sinking ship.

Anyone as clever as him would certainly know when he's on board one, and take the right measures to make sure he jumps off it when the first signs appear and the ship begins to teeter.

. . . Then in mid-May, there was an article stating that he was taking a break from his Airbnb job to return to the White House, and help prepare Biden for his debate with Trump.

Apparently, Ron is known in Washington, D.C. circles for being one of the best debate trainers in town. He's very sharp and astute with a depth of political knowledge and experience very few can match.

. . . [He said imn the article,] "We need to have debates where the candidates get equal time . . . where the American people can compare the two people who are the leading candidates for president."

Well, Ron, we certainly got to do that on Thursday. Maybe more than you would have ever wanted or known. As they say: In life, be careful what you wish for.

These days I often ask myself: What happened to the Ron Klain I once knew? He had all the answers back then, so where are his answers now? How could he have let such a calamity happen on live television in front of a global audience of tens of millions?

. . . Please give us the right answer, Mr. Klain.

It's beginning to sound as though some of Joe's long-term, highly capable advisers had begun to lose confidence long before the current campaign season. This retrospective by William A Jacobson at the Legal Insurrection aggregator lists some of the warnings everyone had been ignoring:

There has been a grand coverup of Joe Biden’s cognitive problems by Democrats with a big assist from the media. There is now faux contrition beginning to come out from the media, but don’t believe them. Defeating Trump in 2020 squelched the story, and they tried it again in 2024.

I’m so old, I remember when Biden’s cognitive problems were an issue in 2020, raised by Democrats in the primaries. We knew then. A lot of people knew then.

We covered it. We even started a Tag Biden Cognitive. I wrote about it. Stacey wrote about it. Mike wrote about it.

He starts a long list with this tweet from Jake Tapper from as long ago as 2019:

We’re starting to hear more Democrats publicly expressing doubts like this one about Biden. He’s been gaffe-prone for much of his career so presumably they think this is something else. https://t.co/jXXThBEryu

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) August 9, 2019

So it's starting to sound like even some of Joe's longest and most loyal retainers had begun to lose confidence in him, like apparently Ron Klain as of early last year, and according to the UK Daily Mail,

A simmering rift between Joe Biden's family and staff has finally boiled over after his disastrous debate performance last week.

. . . Fallout from the debate gave Biden's family, including his disgraced son Hunter, ammunition to settle old scores with his staff and be more involved.

They blame his staff for failing to adequately prepare him for the debate and more broadly for not putting him in a position to show his strengths.

'I believe the family has witnessed blunder after blunder by key staff personnel and the debate is likely the straw that broke the camel's back,' one of 13 sources close to the president told NBC.

. . . 'The debate fiasco has opened up a lane for the family to surpass staff and start helping out their father and brother who they love dearly,' another insider said.

So it looks like the upshot's going to be the return of Dark Brandon. It seems to me that it's hard to underestimate the counterproductive effect of the combined advice Joe's been given by both his staff and his family over the past several years -- consider the whole "lawfare" campaign that's done nothing but drive Trump's poll numbers up from the start of the indictments last year. More recently we've seen the utterly calamitous effect of scheduling the early debate soon after Joe's two trips to Europe, which themselves simply set up the questions about his health that the debate only exacerbated.

Well, we're hearing rumbles that there will be resignations by Biden staff over the coming week. The most we can conclude is that the crazies are fully in control, and they're unleashing Dark Brandon again.