Politico: It was Jill Biden who convinced Joe to run for re-election

AP Photo/Patrick Semansky

Politico wrote a slobbery piece about First Lady Jill Biden. That wasn’t the interesting part. It’s nothing new for them to sing the praises of Jill Biden. She’s the best thing since sliced bread, after all. No. The interesting part is that the liberal Biden-supporting online publication all but comes right out and blames Jill Biden for the fact that her husband is running for re-election, even though no one else wants him to do that.

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Sure, Team Biden wants him to run again as they have jobs that depend on that. The point that becomes clear in the Politico piece is that Jill wants to continue her comfy lifestyle for four more years. Do you blame her? She’s living the good life. She’s living large on the taxpayers’ dime and answers to no one. She kept her job as a professor of English at Northern Virginia Community College, a job she has held since 2009. She is thought to be the first wife of a vice president and then president to hold a paying job during her husband’s tenure. The White House, including Joe, like to remind people that she has a “Dr.” in front of her name, referring to her as Dr. Biden. The point is that Jill Biden has proven herself to be a very ambitious woman who is not going to pass up this golden opportunity.

She is Joe’s top handler. She appears during interviews and manages his appearances. She helps pull him away from the White House press corps. She and others around him keep him on a tight leash. We are now being told that though Jill was hesitant about Joe’s run in 2020, she’s all-in for his re-election campaign. I don’t think she was hesitant in 2020, by the way. I think if she had not supported his decision, Joe would not have run. Of course, she wanted what Michelle Obama had. She wanted to be the first lady, too.

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Privately, the first lady encouraged her husband to run again while giving him the space he needed to process the decision in the way he traditionally does: with extensive deliberations, consideration of the burden it would place on his family, and a bit of classic Biden hemming and hawing. She was involved in all the high-level discussions around the decision, giving counsel when she felt it was necessary.

“She is usually in the room when senior campaign staff are presenting strategy to her husband. She will ask questions. But she never weighs in on the decision,” said a former senior Biden adviser.

Her gentle encouragement of her husband’s reelection run comes as she’s relishing her role, hanging out at the Super Bowl and the women’s Final Four, and actively posting on social media. Unlike the cliche applied to wives of major political figures — that they’re the “secret weapon” behind their husband’s success — there’s nothing that secret about the role she is playing.

That’s true. Jill doesn’t even coyly pretend that she isn’t the boss of Joe. And, Joe frequently tells his audiences that he’s Dr. Jill Biden’s husband. How’s that for a show of leadership on the world stage? He makes himself sound like he’s a househusband. He is the alleged leader of the free world. He’s tucked away from the press on the off-chance they ask him an important question. Jill, in contrast, is everywhere. She attends big sports events, like the Super Bowl and the college women’s basketball championship. And she has traveled more than her husband, the vice president, or the vice president’s husband. Traveling on the taxpayer’s dime is a fine perk, right? She recently traveled to Africa and visited three countries there. I’m old enough to remember when Melania Trump traveled to Africa without her husband, she was roundly mocked for her wardrobe and mocked as an unserious person. Not Jill. She’s always the hero of her stories.

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In his campaign, she is going to play the role of character witness for the family. The Biden family is famously corrupt and First Son Hunter Biden is a prime example of the sketchy deals in foreign countries that Hunter and The Big Guy, along with other family members, have cashed in on. The second home in Delaware on the beach isn’t going to pay for itself.

Advisers are envisioning a role for Jill Biden on the campaign in which she serves as a character witness for her family — especially Hunter Biden — and a conduit to suburban swing voters who, they believe, relate to her.

“She sees herself as a wife and a mom and a nana. And what wife, mom and Nana wouldn’t defend their family?” one senior Biden adviser said. “She is going to defend her family and take issues with attacks on her family. But she has been in politics a long time. And so they’re well aware that nasty attacks have come in the past and they’ll come now and they’ll come in the future.”

And at a time when suburban women are drifting toward Democrats and the nation’s schools have become political battlefields, the White House sees utility in having a prominent educator standing beside her husband. The issue of “book banning” featured prominently in Biden’s reelection launch video.

“She can reach suburban women, in particular, in a way that really resonates with them. She is effective in talking about how the Biden agenda is good for moms, for women, for working women,” former White House communications director and 2020 deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said. “I think she brings a credibility that comes from having kept her job as a teacher, even as they came into the White House, both when he was V.P. and now.”

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To be fair to Navy Joan, Jill embraces the role of nana to six of her seven grandchildren. Navy Joan is not acknowledged by the Biden family.

Ugh.

Despite her best attempts to hide Joe from the voters, everyone can see he is failing. Not just in his role as president but physically and mentally. He’s 80 years old, for heaven’s sake. He’s supposed to be relaxing at the beach house and enjoying his grandchildren at this point in his life. He will be 82 years old in 2024. When do we acknowledge that Jill is guilty of elder abuse? She is a younger wife (she is 70) who is unwilling to give up the good life in the White House, no matter the effect on her failing husband. It’s sad. Does no one love Joe Biden enough to say it’s time to go to Delaware permanently? Jill can keep her teaching job if she so chooses. Let Joe retire.

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Ed Morrissey 12:40 PM | November 21, 2024
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