Biden’s secret strength is on its last leg

“It’s hard to lose, even with a bad team, when you’ve got no opponent.”

Lee Edwards said that to me Wednesday night when I visited his Arlington home to talk life and politics. In his 91 years, he’s lived a lot of both those subjects. His career kicked off in 1964, when he served as Sen. Barry Goldwater’s press director on the way to their glorious defeat. What he meant Wednesday night was that if they want to topple Joe Biden, the Democrats need an actual alternative.

The reality is that Kamala is the only potential replacement, in terms of logistics, money, appearances, and the rest, but even George Clooney couldn’t bring himself to name her.

Take George Clooney’s big Obama-blessed (?) New York Times op-ed, for example. Clooney savaged the president, saying he is not “the Biden of 2010” or even “the Joe Biden of 2020.” “I love Joe Biden,” the headline read, “but we need a new nominee.”

Even with Democrats’ devotion to not checking IDs at the voting booth, “a new nominee” won’t cut it for president. They need an actual person — and one Democrat whom dissidents are virtually united behind. In the absence of unified and effective resistance, even a damaged alternative holds the momentum. That's finally changing.

The first inklings of this shift began to appear Thursday night. Vice President Kamala Harris’ name came up time and time again as horrified Democrat-aligned broadcasters watched the president introduce Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “Putin.”

The angry campaign speech Biden gave two hours late from the NATO conference in Washington, D.C., didn’t change that narrative, nor did his answers at the “big boy press conference” that followed. A stellar performance might have offered some reprieve, but calling Harris “Vice President Trump” and fading halfway through his sentences and whispering about his accomplishments was not it. His biggest resource now isn’t himself — it’s the vice president waiting eagerly in his shadow.

If Kamala Harris actually had the goods, it would be over already. The marching and shrieks outside the White House fence would long since have toppled its walls. “How dare an old white man stand in the way of the first black female nominee? The first Indian and Jamaican chief executive? The first president with two immigrant parents since that estranged grandfather of the Democratic Party, Gen. Andrew Jackson?”

But you don’t hear any of that because no one likes Kamala Harris, and that’s not just projection. When California Gov. Gavin Newsom was calling in all the reinforcements during his recall, no one rang for the vice president and former Golden State senator.

Since the debate disaster, far from manning the ramparts to bolster the weakening ticket, she’s been sent to collect checks from top donors. Her calendar over the past two weeks has included four campaign events: Las Vegas, New Orleans, Los Angeles, and Park City, Utah.

The vice presidency of the United States has essentially one job requirement: being able to replace the president. Well, Democrats ignored that and went for a diversity hire instead. They’re reaping it, while Biden has been lapping it up. There’s now reporting that even the Biden re-election campaign is quietly polling her head-to-head chances against Trump. You’ll likely see those results leaked, no matter who they help.

The reality is that Kamala is the only actual potential replacement, in terms of logistics, money, appearances, and the rest, but even George Clooney couldn’t bring himself to name her.

And Clooney is the guy who hosted the star-studded Biden fundraiser that coined the 1984-esque phrase “cheap fakes” when the White House press secretary tried to deny that Biden was gently led off the stage by former President Barack Obama. He kept his silence for three weeks.

Campaign donations are in free fall, people are angry, and the feeling in D.C. is as strong as ever that Biden’s days are numbered. The last remaining elected Democrats will flee the city on Friday, trailed through the nearby airports by the first hostile press they’ve ever encountered. They’ve got a merciful week off while Republicans meet to officially nominate their ticket in Milwaukee.

But while they’re away, the phone calls and text messages between them will continue. They’re done with Joe Biden for president. To make that happen, they’ll have to force the old man overboard and unite behind Harris. It’s hard to see it saving them in November, but they’ll do their darndest.

Blaze News: Donations to Biden campaign are imploding, sources tell NBC News: 'The money has absolutely shut off'

Blaze News:What Obama chose not to do about George Clooney's essay speaks louder than any words could: 'Eye-popping revelation'

Glenn Beck: Are Democrats done with Joe Biden? Glenn and Piers Morgan debate

The Beltway Brief: ‘The new candidate’s’ money problem

The Daily Caller: This Man, ‘The Voice Of The Silent Majority’ For A Half-Century, Has Lived Conservative History Like None Other

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IN OTHER NEWS

We launched ‘Blaze News Tonight,’ and it’s excellent

That’s right. For those of you who don’t know, we launched “Blaze News Tonight” in prime time on Thursday and will be back at it tonight. Anchored by the illustrious and glamorous Jill Savage and co-hosted by our very own editor in chief, Matthew Peterson, we’ll be on the air every weeknight on BlazeTV, YouTube, and X.

I’ll be chiming in from the Swamp nearly every night as the D.C. correspondent, so you know it will be great. Except for next week, when I’ll be heading to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, live to you from the home of Pabst Blue Ribbon, on all the ups, downs, and ins and outs of the Republican National Convention. We hope you’ll tune in!

The fire rises: The New York Times: America’s new Catholic priests: Young, confident, and conservative

The Catholic Church took a hard-left shift in the United States and elsewhere in the 1960s. The results speak for themselves: plummeting attendance, falling donations, declining ordinations, and skyrocketing scandals. And secular society has merrily led the way, attacking life, marriage, morality, religiosity, and even the basics of gender.

Thanks to both an increasingly hostile culture and the scandals within the church, joining the priesthood is no longer an automatic promotion in society. Because of that, the only men taking holy orders are ones who are prepared for battle. And in them lies the future. Ruth Graham reports:

... More than 80 percent of priests ordained since 2020 describe themselves as theologically “conservative/orthodox” or “very conservative/orthodox,” according to a nationally representative survey of 3,500 priests published by the Catholic Project at the Catholic University of America. Foreign-born priests in the United States, a significant presence as ordination rates remain below replacement levels, are less conservative theologically than their American-born peers. But still, not a single surveyed priest who was ordained after 2020 described himself as “very progressive.”

Politically, the trend is similar, with almost all priests ordained in 2020 or later describing themselves as moderate or conservative.

That represents a sharp contrast with priests ordained in the 1960s, about half of whom describe themselves as politically liberal, and an even greater share as theologically progressive.

In the near future, in other words, the liberal Catholic priest could essentially be extinct in the United States. The shift toward more uniform conservatism puts the rising generations of priests increasingly at odds with secular culture, which has broadly moved to the left on questions of gender, sexuality, reproductive issues and roles for women …