What If The Coming Biden Drop-Out Was A Long-Term Plan?

I was probably wrong in December of 2021 when I thought that Joe Biden had no intention of seeking a second term as president.

And heck, I could be wrong in my prediction that he will drop out on or about July 18.

But assuming I'm not wrong, what if it's something other than what it looks like?

What it looks like:

Biden really, really, really, really wants to (or is at least under e.g. family pressure to) be the Democratic nominee, but is being dragged kicking and screaming toward an exit.

Alternative hypothesis:

At some point prior to the primaries, Biden decided he wasn't going to run again.

But he didn't want a messy primary season. He wanted considerable control over the nomination, even though he didn't want the nomination.

So he cleared the decks of plausible contestants by announcing his candidacy for re-election, meaning that there wouldn't be any serious primary contests ... and meaning that when he withdrew, very close to the actual nomination vote date, whichever successor he endorsed would be the inevitable nominee because no one else would have time to put together any kind of real effort to sway the voting delegates.

Maybe his cognitive situation went downhill faster than he expected, and maybe he's just gutsing it out a little longer to keep the withdrawal/nomination time frame compressed, but the hypothesis here is that he had already decided to drop out some time last year at the latest.

Maybe his chosen successor knows this is coming, maybe not. But I have noticed, over the last several months, rumors of Michelle Obama privately meeting with big party donors, and right before "that debate" there was a series of obviously planted stories about how she is no longer "close" with the Bidens. Does she have a campaign in waiting already pretty much set up?

This is just a hypothesis. It could become a testable/provable theory if source materials (e.g. correspondence, call logs, etc.) are eventually released. Or Biden might just come out and say so. In fact, if it's true, I expect him to say so after he leaves office, as a "legacy-builder" way of showing that he chose, rather than got forced, to quit. Mastermind rather than dimwit, so to speak.