Come on, man. It’s one thing for Joe Biden to run on Obama-stalgia. It’s another entirely to recycle that administration’s claim that ended up being Politifact’s Lie of the Year in 2013.

The irony this time is that Biden’s trying to stave off outright socialized medicine with this old canard rather than disguise a stealth version of it. Well, mostly, anyway:

.@JoeBiden on his health-care plan: “If you like” your policy, "you can keep it" pic.twitter.com/Id8GIdr9wP

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) October 24, 2019

BIDEN: … the choice in affordable health care, covered by a public option, a Medicare-like option. With that, under my plan, if you negotiated an agreement for health care with your — with your employer, union or otherwise, and you like it because you’ve given up wages to get it, you can keep it. It should be your choice, but if you don’t like it, if you don’t like it, you can leave it. And you can afford, you can afford a plan that’s subsidized in the health-care policy.

This would qualify as a contender for Lie of the Year in 2019, too, and Biden even explains why. The “public option” got dumped out of ObamaCare in 2009 because it was such an obvious stalking horse to use government subsidies as a way to price private insurers out of the health-coverage business. Thanks to the subsidies Biden brags about here, the public option could and most definitely would operate at a loss, which would keep the prices artificially so low that health insurers wouldn’t be able to compete. It’s a back door to the same Medicare for All system that Biden’s supposedly arguing against in this clip. This isn’t a competing plan; it’s just a less honest way to get to the same result.

I get that Biden’s whole appeal in this cycle is as a rerun, a sort of Happy Democratic Days in which Barack Obama is Richie and Biden’s more of a Chachi. One would think that Biden would know better, though, than to repeat the same episode in which their administration jumped the shark on health care. That wasn’t just about the “you can keep your plan” lie, but also the embarrassing rollout of the ObamaCare exchanges and the skyrocketing premiums and deductibles that ObamaCare produced shortly afterward.

Also, this clip suggests that Biden has more problems than just recycling bad material. He sounds tired, repetitive, and demonstrates no rhetorical or physical dynamism at all. He seems glued to the podium, although it is only a 30-second clip. The argument itself is also less than fully coherent; who hasn’t “given up wages” to gain health-care benefits from employers? That describes everyone covered in an employer-based insurance plan, unions or not.

Biden might have reason to relax, however, as this isn’t the dumbest health-care claim from Democrats today. That crown goes to Minnesota’s own Rep. Ilhan Omar, who linked a New York Times story to claim that the Trump administration’s Medicaid rules killed an infant in Texas. The Daily Caller actually read the article and found out just how ignorant Omar can be. Welcome to our world.

The child she is referencing:

a) is still alive
b) was treated even though he didn't have insurance
c) didn't have insurance because his mother didn't submit the proper paperwork
d) is now coveredhttps://t.co/BAooxL0gm0 https://t.co/1rnnYQqbUd

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) October 24, 2019