Here’s a question many Americans are asking: Who exactly is running this country?
The current president is barely seen.
Last week, Joe Biden took a five-day weekend at his Delaware beach house (again) while Iran threatened to attack Israel, just days after the Dow fell more than 1,000 points in the wake of a lousy jobs report.
On Wednesday, his entire public schedule consisted of a 15-minute drop-by at a White House economic conference and a 4 p.m. meeting to receive his daily intelligence briefing.
Yes, 4 p.m.
We have a deteriorating president who is in the political version of the witness protection program, save for rare exceptions.
He should have resigned from office weeks ago, the minute he announced he wasn’t running again.
Because answer this: How can this man be president for the next five months when he’s tacitly admitted he can’t be president for the subsequent four years?
In August thus far, Biden has held exactly one public event outside of the White House, when he flew to New Orleans on Tuesday to a cancer center to talk about his “moonshot” initiative.
Otherwise, for the first half of this month, he’s spent eight days lounging at the beach.
Meanwhile, Kamala Harris for the last three weeks has stuck to performing the same stump speech at swing-state campaign rallies while avoiding any questions of substance.
All Americans, regardless of political ideology, deserve so much better than this.
But there’s a very good reason why Biden hasn’t resigned: Because unnamed powers in the Democratic Party don’t want Harris to be put in a position of responsibility for this administration’s disastrous record on the economy, inflation, wages, crime, the border and a world seemingly on fire.
If we were talking about President Harris, she would have no choice but to own this train wreck and defend it, having played a big role in creating it as Biden’s partner.
“As you have seen them in the past 3½ years, they’ve been partners, critical partners,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Tuesday.
“It doesn’t matter if it is domestic issues, also foreign policy issues,” she insisted.
“And that has been the case from Day 1 and continues to be the case.”
President Harris couldn’t get away with doing nothing but speeches in places like Michigan and Wisconsin.
President Harris would have to actually govern and make decisions — and be held accountable through these foreign concepts known as press conferences and interviews.
It’s also noteworthy that Biden hasn’t campaigned with Harris in any capacity.
There’s good reason for that: His own vice president is running away from him — not only from him personally, but from his toxic policies.
And why wouldn’t she distance herself from debacles like, say, Bidenomics as much as possible?
Especially when our corrupt media isn’t doing their basic homework to compare the rhetoric of Vice President Harris and Candidate Harris?
Veep Harris, August 2023: “We are very proud of Bidenomics.”
Candidate Harris, August 2024: “Our plan will lower costs and save many middle-class families thousands of dollars a year.”
Get it?
The candidate who has been in power for 3½ years — and who has repeatedly praised the performance of this horrible economy during that time — now has a plan to lower costs.
But only if she becomes president.
You can’t make this up.
Across almost every issue, mostly through unnamed campaign aides, Kamala is running away from her own past policy positions and rhetoric, because those positions are profoundly unpopular with any common-sense voter.
Banning fracking and fossil fuels won’t sit well in Pennsylvania, for example.
Mandating electric cars won’t fly in Michigan.
Abolishing ICE, supporting sanctuary cities, offering free healthcare to illegals and raising taxes — all positions Harris has taken loudly and proudly — would be political suicide if she were to double down on them today.
And that’s why Biden remains in power, in name at least.
Because by doing so, Kamala the Chameleon can traipse off on her own version of the Eras Tour, as a fawning media cheers all her talk about the big changes she’ll make on Day 1.
Despite, you know . . . having had all these years to fix the crises she and her boss created.
Joe Concha is the author of “Progressively Worse: Why Today’s Democrats Ain’t Your Daddy’s Donkeys.”