As Joe Biden’s mental decline has got worse over the last six months his campaign team have decided on a basic strategy of limiting his exposure to the public.
The Chinese Sinus Rot disease was an alibi made in heaven for such a scenario, as Biden stayed in his home like tens of millions of other elderly Americans and used the Internet to conduct interviews, give speeches and so forth. Even then, Biden has not done well, with the following merely one of an almost endless run of incidents where he’s wandered off-topic, lost the thread of what he was saying (even when reading from notes), garbled words and generally produced word salads. By contrast this is merely the sort of foot-in-mouth gaffe that has marked his entire career:
If a Republican or corporate CEO said this, he’d have been forced to resign by the end of the day. Biden later walked this back with Twitter posts, but there is no way he was writing them.
Or this one, where a Black interviewer asked about Biden taking a cognitive test. Another characteristic of senile old men is getting testy when challenged and reaching into their lizard brains for a response. Turns out Biden has other monolithic opinions about Blacks as he challenges the interviewer:
“Come on, Man. That’s like saying you… before you got on this program will you take a test where you’re taking cocaine or not. What do you think, huh? Are you a junkie?”
But he can’t stay locked in his basement forever. At some point a Presidential candidate has to get on the road and campaign. And then there are the debates, and the full-court-press on them by the MSM has been coming for some time.
Come on, Man. This is just more evidence that the Democrat Party and their MSM Operatives With Bylines, having turned to Biden in desperation to avoid Bernie Sanders, are now shitting bricks at discovering they’re about to nominate for President the first ambulatory, talking root vegetable in America’s history. Hence the focus on the VP candidate and now avoiding debates.
Unlike many other diseases you don’t get better from dementia and there is no treatment and no cure. It’s chronic and progressive. You just get worse until you die. There are no exceptions.
Mind you. I’m still allowing for the possibility that this is just a setup for the debates by driving expectations for Biden down so low that he could “win” simply by not drooling on his desk. As the West Wing episode had it, “I want expectations driven low. Really low. Like core of the Earth low.”
No Minister 
America deserves better than either candidate on offer, but that’s not our call, that’s the call of Americans who refuse to engage with the process.
This election is no longer about the candidates and perhaps not even their respective parties. Much larger things are afoot, of which Trump, and for that matter Biden, are mere symptoms.
The first clip is problematic. Although the context is missing. Was it a question about the fact the Blacks are a more monolithic voting group than Latinos?
The second clip is not problematic. Biden is perfectly entitled to be highly offended by such a question, and is entitled to hit back. If I was asked such a question on TV, I would say it was a ridiculous question, and tell the interviewer not to be stupid.
If the first was just problematic the Biden campaign would not have wasted time trying to walk back the comments. And it’s right in line with his earlier comments about how if you’re Black and don’t vote Democrat then “You ain’t Black” – or needing an Indian accent to run a 711. The list goes on and while these were dismissed for years when he was a Senator with eye rolls and “That’s just Joe”, that response won’t cut it for a Presidential campaign.
As for the second it’s an entirely appropriate question given that even Democrats are now expressing concerns about Biden’s brain. There are many videos out there in which he’s far worse than that and those alone make the question one that needs answering. It’s just that the Democrats and the MSM tried gaslighting people about his mental state even as they watched it happening before their very eyes. They’ve got a big problem. He should have run in 2016.
When an interviewer asks a question like that they can expect a bite back. And that is what he got.
It is a perfectly reasonable answer. He is clear he is not going to get such a test, and he is going to stay so in black and white. Up to you whether you object to such an answer, I don’t think his response is a problem, and neither will about 99.9% of those inclined to support him.
From a June press conference:
To be fair to Biden he probably got confused in that press conference as well and was thinking of a different test. Maybe they should play his answers for him on a “record player at night.”
Oh – and aside from his fellow Democrats taking sly shots at him on this during the debates there’s also surveys of voters. From the same Hill article:
Early Onset Dementia, strictly speaking, is dementia that starts when a person is under 65. I think what you mean is early stages of dementia. It covers waffly behaviour, a bit of a sharp tongue, a tendency to verbally wander, and a lack of self awareness in what is said. Typically, existing tendencies become more noticeable.
Does Biden have these things? Possibly. How severe? From what I see not too much, since he has always been a bit like this. But I can see why people make the point about it. And it does make the VP pick a bigger issue than normal.
Nevertheless I way prefer Biden (even as he is now) to Trump.
Reblogged this on Utopia, you are standing in it!.
Wow thats a huge call Wayne, you prefer Biden to Trump, based on what….TDS, and the fact you were a National Party wet?
I like this comment from Breitbart, who reported a poll of 1000 voters reckon Biden wont last the 4 years, not because of his dementia but because of Nancy and his running mate.
“By the end of March they could tell him he’d served all 4 years…give him a bowl of Malto Meal and a pair of fresh slippers and wheel him into a closet somewhere in the White House. He wouldn’t know the difference..”
Some reckon he wont make March and therefore would be the shortest serving President at under 30 days.
Rossco,
What do you think the percentage of Nat MP’s who would prefer Biden to Trump? I reckon it would be around 75% (at least).
Most would think Trump has coarsened political life in the US. His impact on NZ has been bad, specifically by pulling out of TPP.
And Trump has pulled out of numerous Arms Control Agreements and the Paris Agreement. All of which have strong bipartisan support in New Zealand.
So yes, Trump has been bad for the Western Alliance nations. He has fundamentally weakened the Alliances. Biden will get them working again.
Wow. You really have no idea how the world is changing.
Not all of us are in thrall to Russia, Tommy Bhoy.
Tom, you are the one who is deluded. You seem to be hanging out for a full scale shooting water in East Asia. An absurd notion.
Trump is going to get his comeuppance in 100 days. It is all over for him.
He has seriously weakened the western alliance and it will take time to repair.
Oh, so that’s why he moved all those troops to Poland, putting more serious NATO firepower closer to Russian borders. Bet Putin loved that, along with all the sanctions Trump has on him.
Former Cabinet Minister or not, if you want to be taken at all seriously you need to stop throwing these absurd straw man arguments at me, which you’ve now done several times.
Based on the polls? I’d be willing to bet you said the same in 2016. So did I.
It’s possible of course, elections being what they are, but if Americans decide to vote for the sort of Democrat rule at a Federal level that they’ve seen demonstrated in New York, California, Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, Chicago and Illinois, then the USA will be far beyond any repair at the hands of Biden or anybody else.
You don’t seem to have thought through the 2016 election result at any deep level at all.
And the news is in that Biden has picked Kamala Harris as his VP candidate. Level of surprise here? Zero.
The real question is why all the delays in the last couple of weeks? Did she first have to apologise to Biden about getting stuck into his opposition to busing in the 1970’s that threatened to racially segregate her as a little girl?
Ah well, time has moved on for both of them: there have been increasing numbers of Blacks in the USA demanding segregation on campus dorms and such. It’s not called that of course; “POC safe space” is the approved term now.
Tom,
Lets agree on a mutual non-aggression pact. We will both stop throwing insults at each other and impunging each others intelligence. Lets keep the debate at the level of the actual issue.
As for Kamala Harris, as you say, she was always the logical choice. In fact through the debates she was my choice to be the candidate. She simply looks presidential.
She will strengthen the ticket. She is probably the most moderate of all the VP options, and comes across as savy and strong.
I pick a relatively easy win for the Biden Harris ticket.
Oh I didn’t take it as an insult to my intelligence, merely that it was a particularly silly straw man argument that you put forward, even if the intention was to goad. And while I’m more than willing to hold off on big insults, allowances should be made for the occasional sly dig. Would be boring otherwise.
Not the way the Democrat primary voters saw it. From memory she’d run out of gas long before even the Iowa caucuses. And although she might’ve been able to play the moderate in any other election – for example talking up her toughish law-and-order attitudes in California – as a VP candidate she’s expected to rark up the Progressive wing of the Dem base while Biden plays the moderate card with the centrist Presidential voters.
The trouble is that with many Democrats expecting her to take over from Biden in his first term, she’s also going to have to play the moderate card, which is going to dent a base that was already unenthusiastic about Biden.