Note: American Renaissance is having its annual conference in August at the usual location in Tennessee. It is a great event and anyone who is interested in the sort of politics discussed here should make it there at least once. You can sign up for the event at the American Renaissance website.

Way back when the Democratic Party stepped into the 2020 primary to make sure Bernie Sanders would not be the nominee, there were two questions. The first is why they selected Joe Biden, a broken-down old weirdo with limited appeal? They seemed to have better choices. The other question was how realistic was it to expect Biden to live through the election, much less his first term?

The answer to the first question is that he is stupid and controllable. Joe Biden was always known for being one of the dumber figures in Washington. Age has not improved that, so he was the one option who would not ask too many questions. Barak Obama often made jokes to his staff about Biden being an affable simpleton who would say whatever he was told to say.

In fairness to Biden, American presidents are figureheads, for the most part. They are the spokesman for a group of people. This group is their donors, institutional backers and party allies. The president is the spokesman for the team he represents. In office, that team fills the thousands of jobs in the executive branch, formulates policy and provides the president with options and advice.

The two main problems with Biden were that he was so old he would not be a very good spokesman and he was so stupid he would say the quiet part out loud. This was balanced out by the fact that he no longer had the ability to understand what was happening around him. This meant the team could do what they liked without worrying that the boss would take exception.

That answers the first question. The second question is more complex. Surely, they knew Biden was declining mentally. That was obvious. The thing about losing your faculties to old age is it can go quickly. They probably knew he was not suffering from Alzheimer’s, so they figured he could be propped up for at least one term. The media could be counted on to cover up much of it.

The bigger issue is his physical health. The presidency is a fulltime job that requires long hours even for a puppet. There is a reason that presidents seem to age so quickly over their first term. Even if Biden is not making any decisions, he still has to maintain an appearance schedule. Many men can keep the pace into their late seventies, but it was clear in 2016 that Biden was not one of those men.

The logical answer to this problem then was to drag his dying carcass across the finish line to get rid of Donald Trump then figure out how to dump Joe Biden. The only problem with this idea was the next in line is Kamala Harris. She makes Joe Biden sound like Cicero. Worse yet, she has the behavioral instincts you have come to expect from video of the waiting area of Spirit Airlines.

Maybe that is why they decided to run Biden for a second term. Perhaps they convinced themselves that he was physically fit enough to make it another four years. Maybe the doctors said they can keep his brain functioning enough to make it seem like he is aware of his surroundings. Maybe they had no other answer and just decided to kick the can down the road.

That is what makes the bribery scandal puzzling. Someone put the information about this bribery scheme into the hands of the Republicans and told them to use it. Chuck Grassley is one of the most compliant, go along to get along, people in Washington, so if he is on the Senate floor accusing the sitting president of taking bribes from foreign actors, it means he has institutional support.

At this point, people may wish to believe that a brave whistleblower has supplied this information to the Republicans, but that only happens in Hollywood. The FBI could easily have disappeared the documents so that Congress could never demand to see them or even ask about them. The FBI has no reason to participate in this highly choreographed outrage show starring Ted Cruz.

The question is, why are the people who have spent generations framing innocents and derailing ambitious politicians now undermining Joe Biden? Have we reached the point in the Praetorian Guard phase of the empire where the FBI changes rulers simply as a way to show they can change the ruler when they please? Is this part of a scheme to remove Biden from the ticket in favor of another option?

The answer may be less specific and more about process. It is clear that both parties and official Washington have grown weary of the primary system. For starters, it means the army of consultants and choreographers spending time with the Dirt People in God-awful places like Iowa and South Carolina. Grubbing around in these backwaters for votes is unbecoming of a ruling elite.

The bigger problem is the unpredictability. Fortifying a general election for democracy is not too difficult, as we saw in 2020. You just need to target a few relatively small states with enough resources. Fortifying the entire primary process for democracy is much more complicated, expensive, and unpredictable. Maybe it is time to return to the old convention model and select nominees in the shadows.

It is clear the Republicans are headed this way. They have been quietly changing rules at the state level anticipating another Trump run. The party will rule him ineligible in the fall and have his delegates become super delegates controlled by the central committee at the convention. This not only solves their Trump problem, but it also solves their problem with the base, which increasingly hates the party.

This Biden bribery story may be the road the Democrats take to move their nomination process out of the primaries. Sometime during the primary process Biden decides to drop out of the race. Maybe it is the bribes or maybe it is his health. The Democrats, pointing to the Republicans as a model, take the Biden delegates under control of the committee and select the nominee at the convention.

The media will be told to promote this as the next evolution in our democracy and a huge hit with the voters. The ratings for the conventions will be huge! This will be proof that the concept works and both parties will rapidly move from the primary system back to a convention model where insiders in both camps select nominees acceptable to the other camp of insiders. The voters are then left to choose.

If this sounds farfetched, just look through the farmhouse window. Mr. Pilkington and Napoleon are having a good time because neither of them is concerned about your thoughts on the subject. They are more concerned that the other is cheating at the game they are playing. One way to solve that problem is to make sure neither is tempted to make an appeal to the masses.

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