Thursday, March 19, 2020

We Need to Talk about Joe Biden

Carlos Barria/Reuters
It may be uncomfortable to bring up the former vice president’s visibly diminished mental capacities, but it’s vital that we do.
Democrats showed us a surprising amount of cohesion and coordination, when, collectively, they took action to turn Joe Biden’s strong finish in South Carolina into a romp through Super Tuesday. But they may regret this decision sooner than they think — and we may come to despise them for it.
Already there is an effort underway to protect Biden from any possible damage that Bernie Sanders could do to him in the remainder of the Democratic primaries. Leading Democrats such as James Clyburn have argued that it would be useless to hold more debates, because the party already has a strong front-runner, a prohibitive favorite if polls hold up.
Really? The whole point of elections is to see if polls hold up. Biden currently has 867 delegates. Sanders has 711. It takes 1991 delegates to win the nomination. The last televised debate was before the South Carolina primary, and it included Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Mike Bloomberg, Elizabeth Warren, Tom Steyer, Biden, and Sanders. We haven’t seen Biden take on someone one on one, though he does threaten random people who question him at his rallies. Shouldn’t he have to close the deal with voters?
Leaving aside those procedural questions, already there is another effort underway to impose a taboo against saying the following: Joe Biden is clearly not well. The comeback front-runner for the Democratic nomination hasn’t lost a step; he’s lost the plot. You’re not supposed to diagnose or psychoanalyze people from afar, I know. It is rude. Having any conversation about the frailty of an elderly public figure always feels rude. Such conversations are difficult to have even about elderly family members, behind closed doors.
Read the rest from Michael Brendan Dougherty HERE.

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