Sometime around midnight, as his political farewell came to a close on night one of the Democratic National Convention, President Joe Biden briefly went off prompter, lamenting that “I may have been too young to be in the Senate” but that now he may also be “too old to stay as president.”
But that’s not true. Biden is 81 years old. He is unquestionably old. But our political system is full of old people — and to many of them, age is just a number.
Former President Donald Trump, for example, is 78 years old, and he can still chop it up with podcaster Theo Von about cocaine owls. And then there’s former Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She’s 84, and she can still orchestrate a palace coup that pushes out the sitting president as the Democratic nominee, just in time for her book tour.
No, Biden isn’t leaving the race because he’s too old. He isn’t even really leaving because of his obvious cognitive decline, which was covered up for months if not years, but became undeniable during his June 27 debate debacle.
He’s leaving because his party made the calculated decision that he could not beat Trump in November. And his party made that decision only because Pelosi gave her assent.
On July 5, Biden sat down with George Stephanopoulos and explained it would take “the Lord Almighty” to get him to drop out of the race. He followed that up on July 8 with a lengthy, strongly worded letter to House Democrats, making it clear he would not be stepping aside. “I want you to know that despite all the speculation in the press and elsewhere, I am firmly committed to staying in this race,” he wrote. “The question of how to move forward has been well-aired for over a week now. And it’s time for it to end.”
It seemed definitive. But then something curious happened. Two days later, Pelosi appeared on MSNBC’s most sycophantically pro-Biden program, “Morning Joe.” She was asked if Biden had her support to remain on the Democratic ticket. “It’s up to the president to decide if he’s going to run. We’re all encouraging him to make that decision,” she said.
And when asked about the fact that he already had decided, in that letter he had sent two days earlier , she stuck with the same line: “I want him to do whatever he decides to do,” she said.
That was the first hint. Just 11 days later, Biden would announce he was stepping aside in the image of a letter posted to his social media accounts.
We learned a few days earlier from CNN that Pelosi had privately sparred with Biden, noting he’d lose the presidency and “take down the House” with him. Politico reported that Pelosi had made clear the pressure campaign she’d waged had been the “easy way” — and after the weekend, “it was about to be the hard way.”
Somewhat awkwardly — or serendipitously — Pelosi’s new memoir was released two weeks after Biden’s exit. “The Art of Power” was the apt title. It debuted at number one on the New York Times Best Sellers List.
During her book tour, we learned more about what really happened behind the scenes. “They were not facing the facts of what was happening,” Pelosi told David Remnick of the New Yorker. “I’ve never been that impressed with his political operation.”
But when she had the chance to open up to Ezra Klein of the Times, who arguably led the charge among the mainstream media to push Biden out of the race, Pelosi really opened up. Klein recalled how the “Morning Joe” appearance “reopened the space for deliberation,” when it appeared Biden was going to remain as the nominee and had withstood the initial push to oust him. Pelosi changed the equation.
She told Klein, pretty shockingly, that she didn’t necessarily “accept the letter” Biden sent on July 8 as legitimate. “It didn’t sound like Joe Biden to me,” she said, ominously.
She wanted her members to wait until after the NATO conference that Biden was hosting that week — but she notably did not want the conversation to be over. “I see everything as an opportunity, no matter what it is,” she told Klein.
It was strategic. And as she has said in multiple interviews on her book tour, it was done for one reason only — to keep Trump out of the White House. Just business, not personal, Joe. The art of her power, if you will.
Which brings us to Monday. Biden was relegated to night one and pushed out of primetime as the final indignity. And as Biden yelled through his prepared remarks before being disappeared to a week-long California vacation, so that the rest of the convention could pretend he doesn’t exist, there was Pelosi in various television cutaways, waving her “We Love Joe” sign, clearly proud of her accomplishment.
Savage. Just savage.
The Democratic convention has played out in this precise fashion, in a cadence and design that would have been unthinkable just a month ago, all because Pelosi made it happen.
Pelosi took the stage last night in Chicago, and avoided any mention of her role in nudging Biden off the ticket. She’s a killer, and she operates in the shadows.
Vice President Kamala Harris formally accepts the nomination at the DNC tonight, and she has Nancy Pelosi to thank. But she won’t have to. And Pelosi wouldn’t have it any other way.
Steve Krakauer, a NewsNation contributor, is the author of “Uncovered: How the Media Got Cozy with Power, Abandoned Its Principles, and Lost the People” and editor and host of the Fourth Watch newsletter and podcast.