“If it weren’t for the Democratic Party, the Republican Party would fold. They always keep us in the game. They’re able to throw us a lifeline.”
—–Senator Lindsey Graham*
The disastrous presidential debates of June 27 set a new low for U.S. electoral politics. Rarely has a U.S. president appeared so mentally incompetent.
Though forewarned not to highlight his unpopular positions, he defended the January 6 rioters, insisted the 2020 elections were stolen, and said Roe v. Wade is sanctioning infanticide in various states of the union, to mention only a handful of the toxic fantasies that gushed out of his mouth in a torrent of intellectual diarrhea lacking any prospect of turning solid. In a rare reference to reality, he disparaged his opponent for (allegedly) not being genocidal enough in Gaza, which reduced him to the status of terrorist scum – a detestable “Palestinian” – the word now apparently a slur in his eyes.
So performed the “winner” of the debate.
Meanwhile, his opponent coughed and sputtered and rambled in a raspy voice barely above a whisper at times, lost himself in a whirl of half-finished thoughts, and repeatedly lapsed into open-mouthed, vacant staring. He disparaged his challenger as a convicted criminal with “the morals of an alley cat” for having had sex with a porn star, while expressing pride in his ongoing enabling of Israel’s civilian slaughter and imposed starvation in Palestine, which recently included burning babies alive in Rafah.**
So performed the “loser” of the debate, who, after the horror show concluded, was seen basking in the effusive praise of his wife Jill, who exclaimed, “You answered all the questions!”, as though she were encouraging a brain-damaged child.
Media hysteria aside, Biden’s “performance” was no worse than average for him, which is to say, it was terrible, although at least he didn’t claim recent conversations with dead people, as he has on other occasions. His deepening decline into probable dementia has been much commented on for years, as he has stumbled mentally and physically too many times to count, often seeming unaware of his own whereabouts or what purpose he might have in being there.
So the idea that his recent debate performance represents a shocking new development is sheer pretense. We’ve been repeatedly told to “get over ourselves” (Hillary Clinton) and support Dementia Joe by the same people now affecting shock at the spectacle of his senile disintegration, as this was allegedly the only way to defeat the “existential” threat of Donald Trump. But suddenly the condescending experts are not sure their man can make it to the finish line.
Though both candidates are wedded to devastatingly destructive policies, we are encouraged to believe that only Donald Trump is truly dangerous, that because of him “democracy itself is on the ballot,” which is as bankrupt an assertion as “time itself is on the calendar.” If we had any democracy worthy of the name, we wouldn’t be choosing between a loud-mouthed imbecile fomenting civil war and a genocidal geriatric case leading us towards World War Three.
Neither candidate has much upstairs (the only point in the debate that truly engaged their interest was about which of the two has a better golf game), but they seem intellectual giants compared to the perennial devotees of crackpot realism, mostly media hacks and campaign strategists who permanently endorse the quadrennial evil of two lessers on the pretext of needing to keep Satan at bay. Our mind managers actually believe that they can keep kicking us in the political nuts and we will be happy to support their anointed favorites at the polls whenever they tell us to. Sure, and Jesus is coming to put everything right real soon.
While media gas-bags and clueless party operatives panic at Biden’s predictably dismal performance, the question is how they can possibly consider it unprecedented. After all, Biden’s sharp mental decline was painfully obvious four years ago, when he narrowly won the election by hiding in his basement and letting Covid 19 bring Trump down. He had barely campaigned in the primaries, and the media talking heads (except for Fox) fully collaborated in using him to take out the more popular Bernie Sanders, an “extremist” who threatened to return the Democrats to their New Deal roots, and who polled better against Trump than Biden did. That mission accomplished, they then insisted everyone vote for the unpopular and faltering Biden because . . . Trump.
A veritable gaffe machine, Biden is now running for president for the fifth time. The general pattern throughout those campaigns has been that the more familiar voters are with his record, the less they support him. Had it not been for Covid 19, he would now almost certainly be receiving the geriatric care he so desperately needs, instead of tormenting us from the White House.
Here is but a small portion of Biden’s political wisdom that has blessed us over the years:
“Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.”
“We cannot get re-elected, we cannot win this re-election, excuse me, we can only re-elect Donald Trump.”
“We choose science over fiction. We choose truth over facts.”
“We cannot let this, we’ve never allowed any crisis from the civil war straight through to the pandemic of 17__ (last two digits omitted) all the way around 16__ (last two digits omitted) we have never, never let our democracy sakes second fiddle way, we can have both a democracy and elections, and at the same time correct public health.”
“Think about it. We hold these truths to be self-evident: all men and women are created by the ko, you know the, you know the thing.”
“One hundred and fifty million people (nearly one-half the U.S. population – ed.) have been killed since 2007 when Bernie voted to exempt the gun manufacturers from liability.”
“. . . kinds of things that, that have to be done, um, you know, there’s a uh, during WWII, uh, you know, there’s a uh, during WWII, uh, you know, Roosevelt came up with a thing, uh, that, uh, you know, that was totally different, WWII, he called it, he had the War Production Board.” . .. (Biden on how to handle pandemic response)
“Covid has taken this year, just since the outbreak, has taken more than one hundred year, look, here’s – the lives, it’s just, it’s just, ya know, think about it, more lives this year than any other year, for the past hundred years.”
“And the question is whether or not we should be in a position where you, uh, um, are, why can’t the, the experts say we know that this virus is, in fact, uh, um, uh, is, is, is, going to be, uh, or excuse me, we, we know why all the drugs approved are not temporarily approved, but permanently approved. That’s underway, too. I expect that to occur quickly.”
“No, I really mean it. There are trusted interlocutors. Think of the people, if your kid wanted to find out, whether or not there were . . . . there’s a man on the moon, or, or, you know, something, or, you know, something, you know, whether those aliens are here or not, you know, who are the people they talk to beyond the kids who love talking about it?”
Biden has also suggested that black parents don’t know how to raise their children, that they need to keep the record player on at night to instruct them, that he was arrested in South Africa trying to see Nelson Mandela, and that Dr. King was assassinated in the 1970s. He also once forgot the name of the president he served under as vice-president, confused former British Prime Minister Theresa May with Margaret Thatcher, and bungled the timeline of the Parkland shootings.
Less than five months ago he emphatically staged his “I’m not senile” press conference to re-assure us of his supposed unflagging mental competence, during which he confused the president of Egypt with the president of Mexico. “I’m of the view, as you know,” said Biden haltingly, “that the conduct of the (Israeli) response in the Gaza Strip has been, um, over the top. I think that, uh, as you know, initially the president of Mexico, Sisi, did not want to open up the (Rafah) gate to allow humanitarian material to get in.” Sisi is the president of Egypt, not Mexico.
In spite of the fact that such blunders have been routine for years, Biden’s aides get offended when the obvious question is posed: “Does the president have dementia?” Asked exactly this on March 26 this year, White House press secretary Karie Jean Pier characterized the query as “incredibly insulting,” as behind closed doors the president is allegedly a dynamo of energy and acute insight that other mortals can’t hope to match wits with. Sure.
The dismal Biden decline shows no sign of letting up. In a recent Time Magazine interview, relates Counterpunch editor Jeffrey St. Clair, Biden made a hash of names, places, installations, and policies:
“Biden confused Putin with Xi, Russia with Ukraine (several times), South Korea with Japan, NATO with Finland, the Soviet Union with Russia, Iran with Iraq, for[got] the name of his intelligence chief, confuse[d] an oil pipeline with a rail line & Cornwall with London. .. . and then at the end of this embarrassingly incoherent interview when asked about whether he’ll have the mental capacity at 85 to deal with complex foreign policy issues, Biden threaten[ed] to ‘take’ the Time reporter.”
Such flashes of irritation are common in dementia patients, and Biden angrily proposed to fight people on his few campaign stops in 2020. To an Iowa man, he said: “You’re a damn liar. I’m not sedentary. You want to check my shape, man, let’s do push-ups together here, man. Let’s run. Let’s do whatever you want to do. Let’s take an IQ test. OK?” To a Detroit worker, he snapped, “You’re full of shit . . . .Don’t tell me that, pal, or I’m going to go outside with your ass . . . Don’t be such a horse’s ass.” To a New Hampshire university student, he said, “You’re a lying dog-faced pony soldier,” whatever that is.
It is a measure of the contempt Democratic Party elites have for us that this shell of a man was cynically propped up as “presidential” in order to prevent their energized base from delivering us free universal medical care, tuition-free university study, and expanded retirement benefits, among other social democratic features of modernity that have long existed elsewhere in the developed world. Note that this agenda poses no threat at all to the existing economic structure, and that Bernie Sanders himself openly stated that he had no designs on the private sector. Nevertheless, fulfilling even this tame agenda was considered absolutely unacceptable, far worse than a Trump presidency.
Now here we are again with Democratic elites paving the way for a Trump presidency by promoting the deeply unpopular “nothing will fundamentally change” politics of a decrepit fragment of a man fading rapidly into humiliating senility in the full glare of the presidential spotlight.
Their cynicism knows no bounds.
Michael K. Smith is the author of Portraits of Empire
www.legalienate.blogspot.com
End Notes:
*Senator Lindsey Graham quoted in Bob Woodward, “Rage,” (Simon & Schuster, 2020) p. 348
** “Alley cat” morals are hardly unusual in Washington, and seem to afflict Biden as well. A week before Christmas in 1972 his first wife Neilia and their 13-month old daughter were killed by a tractor trailer that crashed into her car as she pulled away from a stop sign. The couple’s two sons were also injured in the accident. Recently elected to the Senate from Delaware, Biden wasn’t one to wallow in grief, preferring to get started on a long Washington career of inappropriate touching, making what the late Alexander Cockburn reported as “loutish sexual advances” to a female staffer of one of his fellow senators in the well of the Senate just weeks after Biden’s wife was killed. See Alexander Cockburn, “‘Change,’ ‘Hope’ . . . Why They Must Be Talking About Joe Biden!” Counterpunch, August 23, 2008
On the burning of babies in Rafah, see Jeffrey St. Clair, “Who By Fire? The Burning of Rafah’s Tent People,” Counterpunch, May 31, 2024.
On Biden’s interview with Time, see Jeffrey St. Clair, “Roaming Charges: The Man From Quiet Room 4,” Counterpunch, June 21, 2024
On Biden gaffes, see Luke Savage, “The Stakes Are Too High To Keep Denying Biden’s Shortcomings,” Z Communications, June 29, 2024. Also: “Remarks by President Biden in a CNN Town Hall With Don Lemon,” July 21, 2021; And: “150,000,000 Killed Since 2007 When Bernie Voted To Exempt The Gun Manufacturers From Liability,” Newsweek, February 25, 2020
On White House aides’ defensiveness about Biden’s mental health, see “‘Incredibly Offensive,’ Biden Spox STORMS OFF After Dementia Question,” Breaking Points podcast, March 29, 2024
