The day after the debate: the emperor Biden’s new clothes
Unlike in the Hans Christian Andersen story, there was no little child pointing and crying out, “But he’s naked!” But last night’s debate made quite a few things clear that apparently had been successfully hidden from at least some portion of the public.
The first is that Biden has lost even more cognitive and physical ground.
The second is that the leftist pundits, press, and politicians have been cynically lying about it in a power-hungry con game.
The third is that in this debate it couldn’t be hidden from the public. Until now, only the right has been reporting on the obvious, showing moments in which Biden seemed confused, physically and mentally froze, and was inarticulate or downright impossible to understand. The Democrats thought if they didn’t show it, the public wouldn’t notice, and people like press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre could do the Orwellian thing and accuse the right of lying with “cheap fakes.”
Even to those of us who have been watching Biden’s mental and physical condition sink and were aware of his cognitive challenges, it turned out that Biden had an especially bad night last night. The hour was late for him. He wasn’t reading from a script. Many people predicted he’d fade as the night wore on, because ninety minutes would be too much for him, but fifteen minutes turned out to be too much for him. Maybe even one minute. They may not have dosed him properly. The extra stress might have gotten to him. Whatever the reason, it was a perfect storm and he wasn’t just terrible, he was shockingly terrible in a way that could not be denied (although some will try, of course).
It couldn’t be denied because it was happening in real time, under a spotlight. This is the reality of Joe Biden, President of the United States, Commander in Chief, and leader of the free world. I think that the various MSM personalities didn’t have to feign shock about that. They truly were shocked, but they were lying about what caused their shock. They had known for a long time that Biden is befuddled and incompetent, and they had cooperated in covering it up for their viewers. But they had assumed that he would do well enough in the debate that they could continue with the con. Their shock was that they recognized almost immediately that the con was over.
There’s an alternative explanation, though, which is that the entire debate was a setup for getting rid of Biden. I think it’s probably true that the Democrats wanted the debate to be held earlier than usual in order to test him out and be able to ditch and replace him if absolutely necessary. But I also believe they didn’t think it would pan out that way; they didn’t think it would be absolutely necessary. But now they see that they have two choices: figure out a way to ditch him and replace him with someone who can win, or find a way to ramp up the fraud to previously unheard-of levels.
Getting rid of Biden as candidate won’t be easy, though. As I’ve said many times, if it were easy and the solution obvious, they would have done it sooner. That’s the big stumbling block. But waiting this long, even if they finally accomplish it, isn’t a good look for the party. The cynically deceptive game they’ve played has become more clear, as has the risk in which they’ve put the nation and the world.
The Democrats have been working the con for four years, ever since Biden was anointed the 2020 nominee. But after last night, I think the con is up – and most of them seem to think so, too. Now it’s time to get a new candidate and/or a new con, and they’re not so sure they can pull it off. I certainly hope they can’t.
NOTE: There’s also the fact that Biden’s decline is now out in the open for all to see. Around the world, every tyrant and enemy of the US is chuckling and rubbing his hands with glee. But you know what? I think they already knew Biden was pretty bad, even before this.
I’ll add that, although I’m not a doctor or a nurse and can’t diagnose anyone, I suspect that Biden has Parkinson’s Disease. How can I say that even though he has no tremor? Although tremor is usually a prominent symptom of the disease, it’s not a necessary one. Biden has many of the other symptoms: a masklike face, slowed gait and small steps, balance problems, cognitive issues, and weak voice.
It’s amazing how quickly all the rats are jumping the ship now that Joe’s problems have been undeniably exposed for the world to see. Those of us who follow politics obsessively have seen Joe’s disabilities for years but a lot of people just don’t pay that much attention. Now they know. What they saw can’t be unseen.
But as you say, getting rid of Joe won’t be easy and that puts all of us in danger. Those around Joe have known his condition for years and have covered it up to the best of their abilities. As bad as Joe’s public performances have been, it is guaranteed that he has had worst moments in private. Those covering up for him are utterly contemptible.
What now? I don’t know but we are now in uncharted territory. With the Chevron and Fischer cases having been decided and the immunity case presumably due next week we are entering one of the most consequential periods of our country’s history.
neo: But last night’s debate made quite a few things clear that apparently had been successfully hidden from at least some portion of the public.
It’s not really successfully hiding something when they willfully put their hands over their eyes. Saying they were deceived is giving them far too much leniency. They ignored.
I predicted in 2020 that Joe would not be around for his full term. While not yet wrong, I find it hard to believe that he has made it this far into his term. It speaks to me that he is a figurehead, a president in name only. I made that prediction because I know what dementia looks like. I live with it every day. My husband was diagnosed in 2020 with younger onset Alzheimer’s and is in the final stage. Spouses are usually the advocate for the affected person, but I see Jill as pushing him, not helping.
Whether they stick with Biden or swap someone in a la Torricelli will not matter to the ballot harvesters and the election officials in blue precincts who will be deciding whose ballots get counted. What the public believes just does not affect the way the ballots get counted, and we need to be prepared for that. The “margin of fraud” is like 25% because of ballot harvesting and other rule changes.
The media talking heads are a midwit hive intelligence and whatever one does, the others do. They panicked in 2012 after Romney’s first debate with Obama. Obama was mentally sharp enough to buckle down and actually do his homework the second time and they got over it, and pronounced him the Best Debatah Evah. They’ll be back on top of a new set of lies in just a few days, possibly about this very debate.
As for Biden’s mental state being out in the open, the Deep State has been taking their cues from Obama since 2017 and that’s not changing no matter what happens in the 2024 election, and I can’t believe there’s any foreign leader of consequence not already aware of this.
I thought this was what the 25th amendment was for.
The left was clamoring for Trump to be removed via 25th amendment for mean tweets.
Funny how politics works. I’ve read pundits suggesting Trump needs to pick the most MAGA VP possible as insurance against impeachment, should the Left regain the House.
It turns out the left was way ahead in the game. Joe picked Kamala as his insurance policy.
It should be shouted out repeatedly to any voter left to be persuaded that the Dems put the country at grave risk by covering for Joe and not doing the right thing. They only care about themselves and their power– not the country.
Pass the popcorn. The infighting behind the scenes is going to spill out into the open with Jill Biden saying in effect, “screw you, he stays put even if he’s a corpse.” The Pelosi wing of the party is going to be maneuvering to get Newsom on as a replacement. Kamala isn’t going to go quietly, and presumably will have the backing of the Squad and the Congressional Black Caucus. Hillary will try to push her way in, insisting that it’s still “her turn” because the election in 2016 “was stolen by the Russians.”
The big loser last night was the Corporate media and you can see the savvy among the paid staff understand the jig is up. It was amazing watching MSNBC right after the debate. Even Joy Reid called out Biden’s obvious diminishment. The only attempt I saw Leftists making was calling out Trump’s “lies” and “avoidance of questions,” but Biden’s demeanor was such a big story attempts to move focus to negative statements on Trump went nowhere. I watched MSNBC and CNN and it was the same.
So if you watched CNN and MSNBC and ABC and NBC and CBS and were told Hillary would win and Trump colluded with Russia and COVID would kill us all and Republicans were deploying “cheap fakes” to misrepresent Joe Biden’s amazing health and vitality… If you read the NYT and Washington Post and Chicago Tribune and L.A. Times and were told the same messages…
More and more, everyday, these legacy media dinosaurs refusing to understand that they no longer have a monopoly on information dissemination results in more and more people jettisoning to more open, honest sources. The multi-million dollar barriers to entry to print and distribute a national, syndicated newspaper or broadcast audio (or audio and video) are gone. Completely gone.
Last night the mask dropped; even among the stuffiest of the stuffed shirts. They can no longer pretend this away.
My idiot SIL is upset that Biden had a bad day, and feels like the Dems have let her down.
I asked her to imagine what it would feel like if she had known Biden was this way for two years, and her entire family had let her down by assuming she was just a conspiracy freak.
Since she isn’t the brightest bulb on the string, I graciously offered “If you’re having trouble imagining that… I can help you out, from first-hand experience.”
As neo writes, the Emperor is not wearing a fine suit of clothes.
The Emperor is naked.
And the Emperor is Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and CNN and the NYT and Disney and Harvard and the WHO and the WEF and the Southern Poverty Law Center and Jimmy Kimmel and Steven Colbert…
The Biden’s won’t go easily. The powers of the presidency are protecting him from facing the trials and tribulations democrats are putting Trump and his supporters through. DNC rules prescribe how to replace Biden after the nomination. If Harris is also to be replaced no one could orchestrate that better than Pelosi.
https://redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2024/06/28/yes-democrats-can-replace-biden-with-newsom-heres-how-n2176094
How this would work with the various deadlines and requirements in every state is a mystery to me but democrats always seem to be able to find an understanding judge.
Time for Dems to call “Hawaiian Judges ‘R Us”.
Nice first post Rufus.
Now it’s time to get a new candidate and/or a new con, and they’re not so sure they can pull it off. I certainly hope they can’t. — neo
I believe it is Lisa Boothe saying, it is the Democrat party that’s the problem. We, on the right, need to encourage Biden’s candidacy so that the Dem party self-destructs. Well, while I’m not entirely opposed to shrewd Machiavellian tactics at this late stage in our Republic; I don’t see a practical, workable avenue here.
I got a good laugh out of this tweet from Kurt Schlichter:
We know gavins the state where the largest cities are dumpsterfire which is on fire where the trains were ransacked like the wild west where the air is full of offal
The next week or two will be interesting to see how they do it. Democrats are shameless so it will probably be in full view.
“Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes ?”
I just saw elsewhere a quote said to be from Trump to the effect that the Democrats’ plan had backfired on them: they had not expected him to agree to the debate terms and so would be able to avoid the debate and put the blame on him. And that his ready acceptance had called their bluff, with the result we saw.
Sorry, I don’t have a link because it was a screen shot of a tweet. But that seems to me to be another plausible explanation.
I watched it all. It didn’t surprise me that Joe acted the way he did. After all, I’ve seen many clips of him fumbling and bumbling through simple sentences. But I did expect a much more caffeinated Joe.
He became most animated and alive when he and Trump were arguing over their golf handicaps. That segment of the debate was actually quite funny. Two old men one-upping each other over their golfing prowess. 🙂
Trump was okay. He certainly got his points across. However, I would have preferred to see hum be more measured and controlled. Nope, that’s not Trump. He was so aggressive and outspoken about Biden’s failures, if I had been Biden’s manager, I would have thrown in the towel after about twenty minutes. It was actually elder abuse.
Can the Dems replace Joe? Remember, Joe has been doing all that Barack wanted him to. By Democrat standards Biden has been quite successful. Can they find another pliable candidate who is more likable and electable? I don’t think so.
While Trump is unlikable to many, his policies actually worked. And he has the energy and motivation to do the job of Making America Great Again. Unless the Democrats can pull off a super fortification of the election, Trump is going to win.
Countries around the world opposed to the US had to relish what they saw last night. China reportedly called it “highly entertaining”; many are wondering what those countries might do between now and January, and the prospect is frightening. The Wall Street Journal saw this coming when it editorialized more than a year ago that anyone who could not see Joe is very impaired was “willfully blind.” The problem we have is, even if Joe is replaced on the ticket, what might he do in the next 7 months?
From “Spiral”, a poem written about the same time as that WSJ editorial:
Infirm liar leading the nation to the abyss
corrupt to the core promoting division and hatred
what happens if he stumbles and falls
with a finger on the nuclear trigger…
Biden flew here to Raleigh after the debate, and just completed a campaign stop at the fairgrounds, with a few hundred people in attendance. He did all right, with a speech written for him and teleprompters. He insists he will not drop out.
Without any hand tremor, if it’s Parkinson’s it’s more likely the rapidly-moving, less common, variant my father had. If so, death will come before the end of the next presidential term.
One other thing occurs to me, and this may be way off base. A friend of mine, age 83, had a drooping eye which bothered her. She saw an eye doctor, was referred to a specialist, and the specialist told her to drive immediately to the ER. She did so, on her own. It was an aneurysm. She had a massive stroke on the operating table, and passed away about four weeks later. Take a look at Biden’s left eye in some of those video clips.
My local paper this morning lead article was Biden a little shaky, Trump lied and put out falsehoods.
Last night, Reuters had the same thing.
Oh, and Biden did poorly because he was feeling poorly, has a cold.
So, still a lot of True Believers.
This is a tweet video from a source calling itself “Trump War Room” excerpting some of Biden’s worst moments juxtaposed against Trump’s reactions and set to sad discordant piano music. Only 95 secs.
https://x.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1806555571937591578
I’m sure the Biden parts are real. The Trump half-screen shows him frowning and looking quizzical with hilarious side-eye-cuts — I’m pretty sure those are real too.
I saw enough video from last night to notice Trump playing this game. All those years in front of cameras has paid off big time. Brilliant.
Acting is reacting.
Thats not how the football works
Trumo read the room and let biden just fall on his own knife
I can tell you from my personal acquaintance that plenty of Democrats saw a different debate from what Right-leaning media is telling us we saw.
I know we’re all hoping for that moment when Dusty Rhodes is caught on a live mic and everyone sees him for what he is, but that’s not the world we live in. The world we live is where where 20% of us will crawl through broken glass to vote for one guy, and 20% will crawl through broken glass to vote against that guy, and 10% make up their minds at the last minute based on God knows what because they don’t pay attention, and 50% only vote when a Dem operative harvests their ballot.
I don’t see how Biden comes back from this — barring a miraculous trip to Lourdes. Joe’s just not that good a Catholic.
This isn’t going to get better, it’s going to get worse, and even low-information voters don’t want to feel like total fools.
So I still don’t believe Biden will be on the ballot in November, though I don’t know what sort of alley-oop the Dems will have to perform to make that so.
If Biden is on the ballot, it will be because the Dems have collapsed into a fetal position.
With Biden the Dems could be looking at a McGovern-style wipeout as in 1972.
I just don’t think they will allow things come to that. Papa Obama will do something or at least try. But I don’t think Michelle can save them now.
Parkinson’s symptoms are similar to some of the symptoms of Lewy body dementia, but my guess is that Biden has a more common form of dementia.
__________
There’s a bit of a reaction against the reaction: some people, perhaps thinking of the Kennedy-Nixon debates are saying that if you just read the transcript rather than watch the video, Biden did well and even won. See this Hill article. You have to read a very redacted transcript and be a die-hard Democrat to believe that.
__________
Say that the Democrats can finally get Biden’s closest advisors to tell him to step down as a candidate, is the party really going to open the choice of the nominee to various hopefuls? The convention would decide? That opens the door to possibilities that wouldn’t help the party. So those convincing Biden to pull out of the race will have to have agreed on a replacement already. Is that likely to happen? Would it be Kamala Harris? Could it be anybody other than Harris? I don’t think she’d be worse than Biden, but how much better could she possibly be?
It’s a side issue, but I think it’s important. Neo wrote “… leader of the free world …”
I’ve long regarded this conventional idea that people in (high or low) public office are “our leaders” as misbegotten. No, they’re in office to tend to certain matters of public concern and responsibility. It can be a very important job, such as Biden’s, but it’s not setting the agenda for the average citizen, which is what being our leader would entail. (In contrast, the founder of a company is a leader because s/he does set the agenda for the company’s employees.)
I especially like what Kevin Williamson wrote on this point back in 2014:
The entire idea of politicians as society’s leadership is an inversion of the real order of things: Government is not here to lead anybody anywhere — it is here to serve us in the important but limited role of coordinating collective action toward such ends as physical security and the enforcement of contracts.
And I recommend Gene Healy’s 2008 book (and essay of the same title), The Cult of the Presidency.
Neo, my father and my uncle had Parkinson’s, and I agree with you.
A genuine sea change, an inflection point, happened in last night’s debate.
Here’s Time’s latest cover showing a bright red background and Biden wandering off stage right — in visual terms, the future — as though it were the edge of a cliff.
One single serif word below the Time logo:
_______________
Panic.
https://time.com/6993760/joe-biden-debate-disaster-democratic-panic/
_______________
Change!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rgc_LRjlbTU
Does anyone click blind links?
I don’t. I like to be romanced before I click a link. Flowers, wine, a bit of description and why a reader might be interested…
I’m not a cheap date!
From the Telegraph post-debate.
David Plouffe and David Axelrod, top Obama advisors, are firing warning shots across the Biden bow:
_____________________________________
Nevertheless, Mr Biden is facing calls from a number of Democratic strategists, donors and politicians to suspend his campaign and make way for a younger candidate at this year’s party convention in August.
One congressman told Matthew Yglesias, a US political blogger: “I think the president has one week to prove he is not dead.”
David Plouffe, who managed Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, told CNN: “It’s kind of a Defcon 1 moment…they are three years apart [Trump and Biden’s ages], but they seemed about 30 years apart tonight.”
David Axelrod, another Obama adviser, said: “There are going to be discussions about whether he should continue.”
Mark Buell, a well-known Democratic donor, said: “Do we have time to put somebody else in there?”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/joe-biden-urged-drop-election-161709216.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall
_____________________________________
Things have changed.
Norwegian blue parrot
The damage has been done. There’s nothing that can be done or said to change that.
@ Kate > “She had a massive stroke on the operating table”
I had been puzzling over CNN’s imposition of a 1 or 2 minute delay in broadcasting their live feed.
Some people suggested they wanted time to doctor out any egregious actions by Biden, or tamper with Trump’s remarks, but the part I watched, and later saw on various video clips, didn’t seem to have been edited.
However, it occurred to me this morning that CNN, and probably the Democrats in control of Biden Inc., had a very real fear of irretrievably broadcasting a Challenger Moment if Biden collapsed during the debate, and especially if he died on camera.
https://www.history.com/topics/1980s/challenger-disaster
“…at 11:39 a.m. Challenger lifted off.
Seventy-three seconds later, hundreds on the ground, including the families of McAuliffe and the other astronauts on board, stared in disbelief as the shuttle broke up in a plume of smoke and fire. Millions more watched the wrenching tragedy unfold on live television.”
}}} Biden has many of the other symptoms: a masklike face
This could certainly be the result of botox, however.
I too for over 3 years predicted Sundowner wouldn’t get to end, so any demise before January is fine with me.
Somehow he wasn’t juiced up at all it seems to me, as if they let him go as is.
Certainly not like other speeches where he is yelling, then whisper.
The biggest thing about the debate night is it probably marks the end of cooperation between MSM and Libs, at least in the short term.
Skip,
I’ve heard predictions (I think even neo wrote this) that he was juiced up, but they did it too close to when he went on and that is why his performance improved as the debate went on.
That “Time” article huxley linked is worth a read.