For the second time, he’s helped keep Joe Biden off the presidential ticket.
Barack Obama is at it again. McGurn writes:
“Heading into the weekend at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Del., President Biden was reportedly stewing over Barack Obama’s role in the orchestrated campaign to force him off the Democratic ticket. The New York Times cited the “unseen but clearly felt presence” of Mr. Obama, which lent a “Shakespearean quality” to the drama that culminated in Mr. Biden’s decision to take himself out of the 2024 presidential contest.
For Mr. Biden, it must have brought back unpleasant memories of 2015, when he was Mr. Obama’s vice president and considering a run for the top job. Instead of encouraging his loyal lieutenant, Mr. Obama and his White House backed Hillary Clinton. That makes Sunday the second time Mr. Obama has helped knock Mr. Biden off the Democratic presidential ticket.
It’s left a mark. Mr. Biden can argue, as he certainly does, that he is the only Democrat to have defeated Donald Trump. His unspoken accusation is this: If Mr. Obama hadn’t intervened against him, he would have won in 2016 as well and spared the Democratic Party its current trauma. It may not be true but it’s a plausible argument—and Mr. Biden believes it.
So far Mr. Obama hasn’t endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed Mr. Biden. But she has racked up many key endorsements. These include would-be rivals for the nomination such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, as well as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—a leader of the coup that forced Mr. Biden out.
That leaves the Democratic Party with an apparent candidate who didn’t receive a single primary vote. The blame rests largely with Mr. Biden and his stubborn resistance to the reality of his diminishing physical and mental capacities. But he can’t be blamed for all of it, because he didn’t get here alone.
Certainly he has now left his party in the lurch. But had Democrats like Mr. Obama and Mrs. Pelosi, who were quietly ratcheting up the pressure on Mr. Biden to step aside, intervened a year ago—well before the primaries began—the party might now be putting forth a strong nominee who enjoyed the votes of party faithful and could count on the enthusiastic support of donors and party leaders.
Instead, they opted to gaslight the American people about Mr. Biden’s health and savaged the one Democrat who dared mention it—Rep. Dean Phillips, who challenged the president in the Democratic primaries. As the Journal’s Barton Swaim reported from the campaign trail, Mr. Phillips summed up the party’s duplicity at a New Hampshire rally in January: “We were having these conversations quietly. But when the cameras came on, it was ‘ridin’ with Biden.’ ”
As No. 2 in the Biden White House, Ms. Harris was in a key position to witness the president’s decline. Yet she too was happy to keep it from the American people. Now she asks them to trust her with the presidency?
On Saturday, Ms. Harris tweeted that as vice president she sees Mr. Biden “when the cameras are on and when the cameras are off—in the Oval Office, in the Situation Room, and on the campaign trail.”
Chris LaCivita, a senior Trump campaign adviser, quickly responded: “Yes you did . . . and you lied about it every day.”
More came an hour after Mr. Biden’s announcement, when the Make America Great Again super PAC pushed out a 30-second spot saying, “Kamala was in on it.” The ad features Mr. Biden falling on the ground and stumbling on the steps of Air Force One. In the background Ms. Harris is heard assuring everyone Mr. Biden was “tireless” and “vibrant” and in “good shape.”
The challenge for Democrats is whether to rally around their new standard bearer. Many already have, including Bill and Hillary Clinton. But Mr. Obama hasn’t, saying he has “extraordinary confidence that the leaders of our party will be able to create a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges.” No one yet appears willing to run against Ms. Harris for the nomination.
It’s hard to blame them. The calculation may be that Democrats are bound to lose, so everyone might as well let her take the hit. But the other question is: Who in the Democratic Party wants to stand in the way when an African-American, Indian-American woman has a real chance to become president? More prudent might be to wait for 2028—and maybe this year accept an invitation to run at the bottom of the Democratic ticket.
But resentments make for strange bedfellows. When all the signs from Rehoboth Beach were that Mr. Biden would defy calls to step down, Axios explained why Mr. Obama couldn’t directly tell Mr. Biden not to run this time. A former Biden aide put it this way: “Obama already used that chit in 2016 when his team lobbied him against running. You don’t get to do that more than once.”
He may have done it through proxies this time, but he did get Mr. Biden off the ticket again.
In his speech after winning the 2020 election, Joe Biden promised to unify the nation. But after almost four years in the Oval Office, he couldn’t even unify his own party.”
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WSJ: Barack Obama Strikes Again For the second time, he’s helped keep Joe Biden off the presidential ticket.

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