Author of “Battle For The Soul“, Edward-Isaac Dovere is a senior reporter for CNN, covering politics and the Biden administration:

“Part of the dynamic here ie that the Obama-Biden relationship is much more complicated than people often understand it to be. They are friendly [but] they are are not friends.

“One person close to the situation said to me a couple of years ago, ‘Neither one of these [men] really has friends, and they’re really not friends with each other.’ They have not been in contact over the last couple of years as people might think. They’ve talked a couple of times.

“Barack Obama has forever been skeptical about Joe Biden‘s chances as a presidential candidate. [Biden has written in his book that] Obama was not encouraging. Obama is not prone to getting involved here. And every time people have reached out to him and said ‘save us, Barack Obama,’ his response has basically been ‘I’m going to stay right here…I’m not saying anything.'”

Not trying to personally persuade Biden to drop out is one thing, but Obama staying silent while pally George Clooney says, with Obama’s consent, what Obama believes to be true is another.

The looming existential threat of Donald Trump‘s likely victory hasn’t gone away. Every sensible person on the planet realizes that Joe’s cognitive diminishment, which is in and out depending on the moment, has only one way to go and that’s downhill.

Every American voter knows this also, and yet Obama would rather let Trump win than stand up and plead for a more hopeful outcome. That’s cowardly. That’s smug. That’s shameful.