It really doesn’t matter whether Joe Biden is in peak condition intellectually during a second term as president. He did some useful things in his first term, but his main job now is to stop Donald Trump from coming back. If he succeeded in doing that and went gaga immediately afterwards, the ship of state would carry on regardless.
However, in the view of half the U.S. population and of almost everybody else in the world except the Russians and their friends, a Trump victory in November would hole that ship below the waterline. Vengeful, anti-democratic, and now endowed with full immunity from the law by a loyal Supreme Court, Trump would wreak havoc both at home and abroad.
We all lose some cognitive function if we live long enough, but when and how much is a lottery. Most of us know people who are already losing it in their mid 70s, and others who are still lucid and fully functional in their mid 90s. What we do know, however, is that it rarely goes from bad to better.
It is people’s automatic, almost unconscious assumption that if you had one “bad day,” like Joe Biden’s nationally televised “bad day” on June 27, then you will have more of them in the future, and more frequently as time goes on. There are many exceptions to this assumption, but it’s what usually happens.
So Biden’s halting delivery, his moments of confusion, his simply blanking out on several occasions on that one day, set the doubts about his mental fitness in motion. Everything he says and does from now on will be closely examined for evidence that his functioning is impaired.
The drip-feed is the killer. Each gaffe on its own is minor, but without an autocue Biden now often serves up a word salad.
Speaking to WURD radio in Philadelphia on July 4, Biden said: “By the way, I’m proud to be, as I said, the first vice-president, first black woman . . . to serve with a black president. Proud to be involved of the first black woman on the Supreme Court.”
Then, George Stephanopoulos of ABC News, interviewing Biden on July 5, asked him how he would feel if he remained the Democratic presidential candidate and lost the election to Trump. Here’s how Biden replied: “I’ll feel that as long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.”
NO! That’s NOT “what this is about.” The candidate’s job is to stop Trump. If Biden is not up to that task, the fact that he gave it his all and feels good about it will be no consolation whatever.
And then Stephanopoulos asked him if he had actually seen the video of the debate. After a pause, Biden said “I don’t think I did.” But everybody else did.
The bad news for Biden is that there is no “off” switch for this process. He is now damaged goods electorally, and the discount that is being applied to his electoral value by various groups of voters can only go up. It is therefore entirely reasonable for the Democratic Party to consider changing its presidential candidate while there’s still time. None of the plausible alternative candidates is currently riding much higher in the polls than Biden himself, but none of them will face the unstoppable erosion of confidence that now accompanies Biden’s campaign.
The change may well come by quiet intra-party negotiations in the next 10 days. If not, one or more rival candidates will certainly make a last-ditch attempt to sideline Biden at the Democratic Convention late next month. Miss both of those exits, and it will probably be Trump’s Second Coming.
Pity has no place in politics. The stakes are too high.
Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist based in London, England, and author of a new book about climate change, Intervention Earth: Life-Saving Ideas from the World’s Climate Engineers.
