No. of Recommendations: 10
LOL, okay. This is the Noble Choice Narrative. The problem with it is that Joe Biden wasn't the one who actually made The Noble Choice in the first place. It was made for him, and carried an "or else" threat.
Except that's not true. Biden made the choice. He could have chosen to remain the nominee. There was nothing they could do to stop him, if that's what he wanted. Again, because he had all the committed delegates. That gave Biden 100% of the power to stay the nominee if he wanted to.
But the Democratic party leaders changed his mind. They got past his protective inner circle and explained to him that he was losing already, that the debate performance was so terrible that he was going to start losing by even more, and that he wouldn't be in a position to turn that around. This was not a threat - everyone knew that Biden was in horrible shape in the campaign after the debates, and that most of the caucus would not be in a position to both defend their own seats and support him. Biden lost the Presidential campaign in the debate, and he simply had the choice to keep the nomination and lose or hand it off so the Democrats might have a chance.
I understand why Republicans want to believe this. They don't want to choose a convicted criminal as a President - that's a tough thing to do. That's why all the Biden Crime Family stuff was so important, to give conflicted Republicans the belief that Biden was just as criminal as Trump, but that he hadn't been convicted. But there's nothing like that for Harris. There's nothing that delegitimizes her the same way Republicans had convinced themselves that Biden was as delegitimized as Trump.
But it's not true. Persuasion is not threatening. Asking candidate to accept the reality of their diminished capabilities and their non-existent chances of winning is not a "coup." He could always have chosen to stay on and lost, and no one would have been able to force him to do otherwise. He just accepted the reality of his situation.
