Now, the world’s oldest political party and its media accomplices have suffered a major breach of trust: the leaders of the former continued to lie about President Biden’s condition until June 27 when they could no longer do so, while the latter condoned Donald Trump’s many lies, believing them to be an excuse for their own.
Here’s one example: The sheep of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” reminiscent of the chorus of quadrupeds in George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” blasted The Wall Street Journal’s meticulous June 4 catalogue of evidence of Biden’s decline (calling it “highly biased,” “shocking,” “classic attack piece,” etc.) — but they were dead wrong. That the sheep are still on the air, spreading their unabated conviction, is evidence of two things: that there is no punishment for failure in modern America, except in a few bastions of meritocracy and accountability like professional sports; and that many public figures possess a frightening strength that comes from their inability to embarrass themselves.
A sobering fact: By January 20, 2025, there will be six months, an eighth of the presidential term, remaining. The collapse of Biden’s reelection campaign amid mounting evidence that he is losing his edge raises a question: if he is unfit to continue as a candidate, is he not dangerous as commander-in-chief in an increasingly sinister world? Hard-headed people in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang may not think that a sportsmanlike international crisis needs to happen between 10am and 4pm Eastern time, a time when Biden is reported (by some of his aides) to be well cautious.
Biden is the only Democratic candidate Trump stands a chance of beating today. And Biden is Trump’s opponent because Democrats are convinced that Trump is the only opponent Biden can beat. That’s why Democratic prosecutors took a step they must have known might make Trump’s nomination easier by making him a martyr. If Democrats now offer a demoralized American a single plausible option, the result might be like a blast of pure oxygen on smoldering embers: an explosion of gratitude.
Sympathy for a man clearly suffering from a relentless, ego-destroying disease should not obscure this fact: Biden’s illness does not rob the public of a brilliant political talent or an exceptionally public-spirited official. Biden was a mediocre figure in his prime in the 1980s. His first run for the presidency quickly fizzled, his second in 2008, and his third, coming in fifth in the New Hampshire primary in 2020, was nearly defeated. In the job he finally held, he chose a legacy that would define him: a narcissism that refuses to gracefully exit the public arena.
Progressives believe that the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. largely He was right. He said that the arc of the universe bends toward justice. They agree that the universe has an arc (though they don’t know what that means), but it theyTherefore, they are constantly congratulating themselves on being on the “right side of history” – they are right and the universe approves.
Progressives defending Biden have convinced him that history (not the voters) chose him to be the next Franklin D. Roosevelt (apart from the 1932 landslide election, the Great Depression, and World War II, but not electric cars!).
On October 21, 1944, 17 days before Election Day, a pale, sky-gray, bare-headed President Roosevelt rode into a cold, driving autumn rain in his open-top Packard for a four-hour tour of four of New York City’s five boroughs. The event (like the debate in which Biden challenged Trump to “make today a success”) was intended to demonstrate his continued fitness to be president. When Roosevelt’s day ended with a rally at the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Ebbets Field, he had 173 days left to live.
So much for the comparison between Biden and President Franklin Roosevelt’s situation, whose vice president was Harry S. Truman.
