Smiling, winking, Biden looked delighted that Kamala Harris lost

At least he beat Donald Trump once. That was more than any of his Democrat critics managed

What is it about Democrats and arriving late to their own speeches? Kamala Harris’ tardiness in giving a concession address was even worse than Hillary Clinton’s notorious no-show on election night in 2016. Joe Biden’s half-hour delay to his national address today was comparatively brief, but still remarkably careless.
After the landslide victory of Donald Trump, with the likely possibility of the Republican candidate carrying the popular vote along with the electoral college, America would naturally be curious as to what their still-sitting President thought about the whole affair. He may have called MAGA supporters “garbage” a few days before polls closed, but anything can happen in a week.
And so you may be disappointed to learn that Biden’s speech was uncharacteristically to the point, lasting a little under ten minutes. After the obligatory nod to the centuries-long experiment of American self-governance, the President acknowledged that “the will of the people always prevails” with a remarkably upbeat expression.
This was an appeal to unity, to continuing the “struggle for the soul of America” while honouring the institutions that bind the nation together. A barely-veiled admonishment to respect the integrity of elections and the officials who work in them may have felt targeted at the opposing party, but could equally apply to the paranoia of progressive activists unwilling to accept the reality of a Trump landslide.
Dropping to a comforting (and almost hard to hear) whisper, Biden offered a message of reassurance for his supporters. “Giving up is unforgivable”. He’s too old to be a father of the nation, but this was a pretty good bid to be its grandfather.
Winking at the crowd of staffers, he looked a decade younger – not that that makes much of a difference at 81 – and spoke with a clarity rarely heard in the later portion of his doomed re-election campaign. It was hard to escape the impression that this was the happiest Biden had been in a long, long time.
That shouldn’t come as a surprise. It would be impossible for the famously irascible Joe Biden not to feel some degree of schadenfreude at the outcome of the election. As Harris jetted across the nation, Biden had been left sidelined during his own presidential term, moping around the White House.
The Democrats took a schizophrenic approach to the sitting President’s role in the Harris campaign. They were initially glad he had done the statesmanlike thing and stood aside (after the New York Times, scores of senior Dems, and major donors demanded it, of course) and so ran a unified front, with Harris saying in an interview that there was not one thing she would have done differently had she been Biden.
Unity could only last so long: campaign operatives were reminded that Biden’s apparent senility wasn’t the only reason he was pressured into handing the reins to Harris. Approval of the administration was at an all time low, with many experiencing Bidenomics as Bidenflation. Harris began stressing that her presidency would not be a “continuation of Joe Biden’s”. Biden was a creature to be scorned, at the very least ignored: even the First Lady seemed to avoid mentions of her husband during swing-state stump speeches.
And it was all for naught. The Democratic party machine failed miserably against Trump. Kamala’s campaign of joy failed to inspire; the billion dollars raised might as well have been chucked into the Atlantic. Perhaps the Biden campaign had been right in suggesting that flipping to a candidate even less popular than the sitting President was a fool’s errand.
Joe Biden’s long lame-duck autumn will make the coming months easier to swallow. As the party cannibalises itself, there may be great comfort in resigning to his personal quarters and mapping out the location of his presidential library. To hell with ‘em all – Obama, Harris, Pelosi. At least he can comfort himself that he managed to beat Trump once. That was more than they ever managed.