Whether he was your candidate or not, Joe Biden has borne the brunt of the Trump impeachment effort. While I am sure Biden would have preferred to be on the sidelines of this battle, he finds himself at its center. At the heart of the most recent transgressions that this president has foisted on the country is his obsession with removing rivals to his reelection. Within his party, Trump has denied Republican dissidents a primary hearing. More troublesome, on the national level, he is trying to “fix” the race even as it begins. Trump’s conclusion that Biden was his most potent Democratic rival was both premature and a demonstration of Trump’s preoccupation with the politics of reelection. After Biden announced in April that he would enter the fray, he was by far the leader in the polls as of late June/early July and was actually surging:
Transcribing extortion
The timing of the Trump-Zelensky phone call is striking. It was the day after Mueller testified before Congress and political observers had determined that his testimony, while damning, was not fatal. Trump was now on to the next issue at hand—securing his reelection.
The Biden concern replaced the anxiety Trump was experiencing prior to the Mueller appearance. A day after the Mueller testified with the pundits proclaiming a Trump narrow escape, a relieved and emboldened president now schemed to take care of the Democratic leader in polls. He made the Ukrainian president an offer he couldn’t refuse— to intervene in the American election process by helping take down his chief rival. Like all offers made by Trump, the reward for a favor granted was far less than the punishment if it was turned down. The obvious “quid” in his pitch was extortion—its related partner, the “quo,” dangled that day, was bribery. The conversation, released in a questionable transcription of the phone call by the White House itself, drips with irony. The Mueller investigation was about Russian interference in the 2016 election. Having dodged that bullet, Trump returns to the scene of his earlier crime by inviting Ukrainian intervention in the 2020 election. There is one added element that Trump adds to this iteration of his criminality, in targeting Biden he invokes a higher-order level of corruption, Trump violated our own and Ukraine’s national securities and tries to extort Zelinsky's compliance. What cannot be lost in most recounts of this event is that in his effort to destroy Biden’s candidacy, Trump had invited the destruction of his own.
The evidence is not fully in on the effectiveness of Trump’s campaign to besmirch the former vice-president’s reputation by innuendo and distortion of known facts—the Ukrainians had already cleared both Bidens of any wrongdoing. The fruits of Trump’s labors are not yet fully known. Biden’s lesser Democratic rivals seem to be jockeying for recognition. However, his closest competitor, Elizabeth Warren, seems to be gaining, closing the gap between herself and Biden—and taking the lead in one poll. Warren’s rise in the polls has been gradual and constant. There is even some evidence, at least at the moment, that Biden is gaining support given the affaire de Ukraine. A sorry-grateful effect that may or may not gain momentum.
The Irony of it all
More likely, one wonders if the Biden candidacy can endure the months of scrutiny brought on by impeachment proceedings so near the election. Trump, in an irony worthy of Freud who was quoted upon his release from nazi incarceration after his Austrian jailers had made him sign a statement indicating that he was not mistreated in confinement:
Ich kann die Gestapo jedermann auf das beste empfehlen. ‘I can recommend the Gestapo most highly to everyone.’
Trump is the master of the scorched earth policy that has been the legacy of his time with his mentor/alter-father Roy Cohn. He is willing to endure any acrimony, absorb any indignity, be exposed for any malignancy in the pursuit of winning. I doubt that Biden is as committed to shamelessness as his bete noire. Trump is all in—even if it includes mutually assured destruction (MAD).
Rest assured, if Trump were to survive this peril, there is little doubt he would proceed to go after each new Democratic leading candidate in their turn. Could Stephen Miller reanimate the “scandalous” claim by Warren of, gasp, her fairly distant Native American heritage? Or could Rudy investigate Corey Booker’s temerity of running for president, challenging his status as an American because of his ancestry? Could there be a sniff of corruption coming from Newark? How about confounding the electorate with the dangers of socialism that could replace him with a comrade Bernie (“comradess” Elizabeth works as well)? A degenerate, like the current president, has no bounds or shame. He is doomed with “tunnel clairvoyance” and can foresee only those consequences that may befall others—and then only consequently those that ensnare him. Morbid stupidity is a common but deadly affliction among his sort.
Mourning Cordelia
His is a classic form of irony—one that appears in fiction so often because who among us would believe it in fact? As Kent wonders in the final scene of King Lear, “Is this the promised end...” and then remarks after Lear’s demise, “The wonder is, he hath endured so long.” In a tragedy named for Lear, it is Cordelia we mourn. So may it be with Biden.
We are left at this time to ponder when at long last will this end. Knowing, all the while that it must.