Michelle Obama, via a spokeswoman, just said she wouldn’t accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for president this year. Or did she?
“As former First Lady Michelle Obama has expressed several times over the years, she will not be running for president,” the statement noted. “Mrs. Obama supports President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ re-election campaign.”
This is miles away from a “Sherman statement.” The Union Civil War general famously declared in 1884, “I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.” He had already said some years previously, “I hereby state, and mean all that I say, that I never have been and never will be a candidate for president; that if nominated by either party I should peremptorily decline; and even if unanimously elected I should decline to serve.”
Similarly, when President Lyndon Johnson was humiliated by a massively strong showing from Minnesota’s anti-Vietnam war Sen. Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 New Hampshire primary, he declared in a national television address later that month that “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.”
A Democrat Dilemma
Consider the dilemma now unfolding for Democrats. It gets objectively clearer with every latest public appearance that President Joe Biden is in steep cognitive decline, the executive branch obviously under the direction of behind-the-scenes West Wing surrogates; undoubtedly a second Biden term, while featuring the octogenarian going through some ceremonial motions of the presidency, would be an entirely staff-run affair. That is until the day that the even-less-popular and under-performing Kamala Harris steps into the 46th president’s shoes, an eventuality likely to happen sooner rather than later.
Add to this the fact that President Biden’s performance on policy is underwater in polling. Illegal immigration and border security have become the top issue to Americans this election year largely because President Biden reversed the deportation policies not only of Donald Trump but of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, too—the latter of whom deported millions of illegal immigrants. Disapproval for President Biden’s immigration policies dwarfs that for his handling of the economy and other issues.
But is it legally possible to yank the nomination away from President Biden, a sitting president whose challengers in the primaries are a third-term congressman representing the Minneapolis suburbs and a self-help guru touted as Oprah Winfrey’s spiritual adviser, both of whom have failed to get any traction? The answer, almost certainly, is no.
That does not mean, however, that pressure, both public and private, cannot be tactfully and effectively brought to bear against the president, of the kind on which President Richard Nixon was on the receiving end as impeachment and conviction in the Senate over Watergate beckoned in August 1974. While Nixon likely already knew he would soon have to relinquish the presidency, a visit to the White House by 1964 Republican presidential nominee Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona, Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, and House Minority Leader John Rhodes to describe his dismal lack of support in Congress proved to be the last straw and Nixon announced his departure the following evening.
