Admittedly, Biden was more cheerful then. But consider this headline from March 2021, two months after he took office: “Biden ‘Fine’ After Stumbles Three Times While Jogging Up Steps to Air Force One,” with the subheading, “White House Blames High Winds and a ‘Misstep.'”
After last week’s debate, the same propaganda team blamed Biden’s “stumbling” performance on a cold. A few days later, they said Biden was suffering from jet lag from a trip to Europe two weeks earlier. No, it was obvious to anyone watching what had happened to Biden. He was slurring his answers because his occipital lobe, fusiform gyrus, hippocampus and temporal gyrus seemed to be having trouble communicating.
Just look at the video, taken after the debate as Biden and the first lady joined supporters in the Democratic press room: The president stands off to the side, looking somewhat stunned, as Jill Biden picks up the microphone, turns to her husband and, as if speaking to a toddler, yells, “Great job, Joe! You answered all the questions! You had all the facts!” Joe smiles.
She then turned to the crowd and shouted, “So what did Donald Trump do? He lied!” It was not her finest moment.
Jill Biden seemed to be running the campaign, and by extension the country, for a while, but I don’t recall seeing her name on the 2020 ballot. It’s clear she’s pressuring her husband to continue the campaign, and she’s probably reluctant to move to Delaware with her aging husband. That goes for you. Age blows in through the front door and, faster than you can say “Scranton,” turns a formerly vibrant and intelligent person into a stranger who only cares about watching dust particles hockey-pokey in the sunshine.
Never mind that the position of First Lady ends at midnight — the White House residence, the staff, the stylists, the magazine covers — “Cinderella” was written for a former First Lady.
Meanwhile, Trump is a recently convicted felon who only benefits from comparison with Biden’s performance. His lies far outnumbered Biden’s, according to fact-checkers who make it easy for us not to. But at least Trump was awake and relatively calm for his part. If only he’d kept his vitriol at a simmer rather than a low heat. Instead, Trump fired back at a clearly shaken Biden, looking just like the back-alley thug he always was.
Biden, as just about everyone has noted, was unable to construct intelligible sentences. At times he entered a staring zone, where his brain frantically searched for a GPS to tell him where he was. As I’ve written over the past three and a half years, it’s been painful to watch. It’s as painful as listening to Kamala D. Harris try to organize her thoughts into sentences. Most of the time, it’s as if she’s hosting a séance. A speech she gave at Howard University last year makes that point:
“So, as you’ve heard from so many incredible leaders, I think it’s so important for us, in any moment, and certainly in this moment, to look at the moment that we are in, where we are, contextualize it, understand where we are in history and in this moment, not just in relationship to the past but in relationship to the future,” she said.
A recent four-minute viral video on X shows her at various points repeating a phrase she is apparently very fond of. I can’t count how many times she utters the phrase “…don’t dwell on the past, look at what’s coming,” in those four minutes, but it’s worth praising her for being able to inject dramatic seriousness into a phrase she’s surely tired of.
With Biden now weighing his options, it seems increasingly likely that Harris could replace him as the Democratic nominee, and I would prefer the chaos of an open convention in Chicago.
But the machinery to make Harris look presidential is already in motion. After the debate, she appeared on television, delivered two statements, and was whisked away. The White House is well aware of Harris’ tendency to wander into metaphysical wordplay. But look closer: Because Harris is the first woman, the first South Asian American, and the first Black vice president, no Democrat would dare say she is obviously no Barack Obama.
For the sake of the country, I hope she is more than she appears, and I hope Jill can bring Joe home with him returning with some semblance of dignity intact. But my fear is that Trump will be president again, not in spite of Harris, but because of her.
