The Second Coming Of The Edith Wilson Administration

     Now and then, the masks come all the way off. Now and then, the Left makes plain what it has in mind for us. And now and then, a major Leftist bastion blurts it out in an unforgettable fashion:

     In the annals of political history, the week leading into Biden’s 30-point margin of victory on primary night in South Carolina will likely be recorded as the one that ultimately determined the course of the nominating battle. That Saturday night, Biden showed his unmatched power among black voters, and began to dispense with his rivals. But you sure wouldn’t have known it from the guy on the campaign trail.

     Voters seem to have coalesced around Biden for his past—who they have known him to be for the past four decades in American politics—rather than for anything in his present. It’s as if Biden exists primarily as an idea, rather than an actual candidate....

     Through it all—the fairly awful campaign events and confusing statements and garbled debate performances—the idea of the former vice president has somehow remained consistent, and apparently convincing, as both Trump’s inverse and co-equal. Senator Bernie Sanders may still be in the race, but this is a detail. Democrats have chosen Biden as their vessel for Trump’s defeat, and that choice is the entire point: The vanquishing matters more than anything else.

     Let’s leave aside for the moment the seemingly trivial matter of who and what Biden is at the moment. The core thesis of the essay is that the Democrats would prefer anyone else to another four years of President Donald Trump. Biden is their strategists’ choice not because of who or what he was or is, but because, of all the candidates the Democrats have entertained, he strikes them as having the best chance to win.

     But what if Biden were to win? He’s so patently unfit for office, mentally and physically, that no one with three functioning brain cells can imagine him actually wielding the powers of the presidency. Therefore...?

     Therefore, Biden would not wield the powers of the presidency. A power or powers behind the throne would do so, using Biden as a figurehead for as long as necessary. How long that might be is difficult to determine. It might depend on the identity and character of Biden’s vice-president.

     The historical precedent for this horrifying vision is the second term of Woodrow Wilson’s presidency, after his stroke. Wilson became completely unavailable. Completely! No one but Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, his wife, was able to see or speak to him. Mrs. Wilson listened to his Cabinet secretaries, other executive-branch subordinates, and Democrat Party bigwigs. She then went to Wilson’s bedroom and closed the door, to emerge some time later with “the president’s” wishes. No one could access the president himself but Mrs. Wilson and a couple of doctors.

     Even then, the arrangement engendered suspicion, but no one was strong enough to break through Edith Wilson’s “stewardship” of the presidency of the United States.

     That state of affairs lasted a little more than a year. It ended with the election and inauguration of Warren Harding. No one dared to question what had transpired for decades afterward...even though the Democrats would foist another badly afflicted president upon the nation only twelve years later.

     So I have some questions. If Joe Biden were, by some evil miracle, to defeat Donald Trump in November:

• Who would be Biden’s vice-president?
• Who would choose Biden’s running-mate?
• Would the VP be the real power behind Figurehead Biden, or would it be other, unelected persons?
• How long would Biden be allowed to live?

     Those questions are forced upon us. They compel us to look at the upcoming election in a light notably different from previous contests involving a first-term president. Trump has a strong position, but no politician’s position is impregnable. Current national difficulties will be laid at Trump’s feet, fairly or otherwise. Persons will “come forward” with accusations about Trump’s dealings, both during his presidency and beforehand. The major media will have their say – and we can foretell whose side they’ll be on. And we must expect at least one “October surprise.”

     As the title of Alex Wagner’s article says quite openly, the Left needs two things from Joe Biden:

• Stay alive;
• Win in November.

     All else is being plotted out behind a closed and securely locked door.