After President Joe Biden ended his 2024 re-election bid, Republicans did little to hide their disappointment — GOP officials were convinced the Democratic incumbent was likely to lose — and some tried to turn the development into some kind of scandal.
Sen. Tom Cotton, for example, insisted that Biden “succumbed to a coup by Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Hollywood donors.” Pressed for an explanation, the Arkansas Republican struggled to defend his own over-the-top nonsense, but others in the party have nevertheless echoed the rhetoric.
Take Donald Trump’s running mate, for example. The Washington Post reported:
Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) tried to characterize Vice President Harris’s likelihood of being the Democratic presidential nominee as a “coup” after the party quickly coalesced behind her in the days after President Biden announced that he would not seek reelection.
“The media … for years has said the Republicans are a threat to democracy,” Vance told a Nevada audience. “They’re calling it a coronation [of Harris]. I’ve got a different word for it: I call it a coup.”
So, a few things.
First, as we discussed last week, we already have a good idea as to what a “coup” is. Merriam-Webster’s definition is as good as any: “a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics and especially the violent overthrow or alteration of an existing government by a small group.”
To think this applies to an incumbent president voluntarily withdrawing from a re-election campaign is obviously bad-faith nonsense. I realize that Vance is new to all of this — his career in elected office began last year — but incumbents retire all of the time. It’s perfectly normal. When they retire at the urging of allies, it doesn’t suddenly transform into a rebellion.
Second, if Republicans like Vance and Cotton are looking for evidence of developments that actually resemble a coup, perhaps they should turn their attention to Trump’s Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol?
As a recent Washington Post analysis concluded, after Trump’s 2020 defeat, the Republican “tried to cheat Biden voters in those five states out of their choice. He tried to short-circuit the effort to count electors. And then he suggested that the furious crowd near the White House direct their anger at the Capitol. It’s useful for Trump’s allies to pretend that Biden’s decision was comparable. It isn’t.” But at the heart of the GOP’s “coup” talk is an implicit message to Democratic voters. The Republican line effectively tells them, “Your own party’s officials helped nudge your own party’s president into retirement! It was a coup against Biden! Aren’t you outraged?” The answer, by all appearances, is no. Before Biden’s announcement, national polling showed most Democratic voters supported a change at the top of the party’s ticket. In the wake of the president’s decision, a new poll from the Associated Press found roughly 8 in 10 Democratic voters will be pleased when Vice President Kamala Harris wins the party’s nomination. If Republicans are looking for a genuine controversy, they’ll have to look elsewhere. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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