This may be the best development yet for Joe Biden. It might also be the best development yet for Donald Trump, too. And as such, Bernie Sanders might deliver the worst of all worlds for his fellow Democrats in his New York Times op-ed yesterday. 

Few in the party have the clout or following to settle the Biden crisis other than Sanders, and he came down foursquare on keeping Biden on the ticket:

But for over two weeks now, the corporate media has obsessively focused on the June presidential debate and the cognitive capabilities of a man who has, perhaps, the most difficult and stressful job in the world. The media has frantically searched for every living human being who no longer supports the president or any neurologist who wants to appear on TV. Unfortunately, too many Democrats have joined that circular firing squad.

Yes. I know: Mr. Biden is old, is prone to gaffes, walks stiffly and had a disastrous debate with Mr. Trump. But this I also know: A presidential election is not an entertainment contest. It does not begin or end with a 90-minute debate.

Enough! Mr. Biden may not be the ideal candidate, but he will be the candidate and should be the candidate. And with an effective campaign that speaks to the needs of working families, he will not only defeat Mr. Trump but beat him badly. It’s time for Democrats to stop the bickering and nit-picking.

"Nit-picking"? Sanders seems to have had a Biden moment himself in forgetting that it was Joe himself that made the 90-minute debate a campaign test, not the "corporate media" or pouncing Republicans. (Or is it seizing Republicans? I forget the odd/even dating system between the two.) Biden and his team openly dared Trump to do that debate, apparently convinced that Biden could outsmart him and outfight him for 90 minutes of live television to reverse his polling numbers and reset the race.

Biden invited everyone to watch his performance and gain confidence in his standing. It's a little late to blame "corporate media" for noticing how horrendously Biden performed in prime time on a stage with a more disciplined Donald Trump. And it was Biden who invited one of the largest of the "corporate media" titans -- CNN, part of the Warner Discovery juggernaut now -- to moderate and broadcast it.

At least Sanders acknowledges that Biden's performance was "disastrous." Team Biden won't even admit that much.

Speaking of which, the string of descriptives in that second paragraph of the excerpt is one hell of a list to ignore, as Sanders demands. What do people surmise when they see an old man who makes repeated mistakes and gaffes, walks stiffly and often needs assistance to find his way? If not outright senility, they certainly see diminished capacity, not an eminence grise. When combined with the images Sanders conveniently leaves out -- the gaping jaw, the inability to look into the camera, the delayed facial reactions all caught by the split-screen coverage, it adds up to an onset of dementia, and not necessarily at its start either.

Still, Sanders wants Biden to remain in the race, and makes that argument clear to his own faction within the Democrat Party. Not only will that give Biden even more excuse to refuse to withdraw, it will also likely slow down the efforts by other Democrats to push Biden off the ticket to save their own races in the House and Senate. Realistically speaking, they only have three weeks or so to get Biden to quit and then set up some sort of credible process for finding a replacement before the convention. Even if they decide to shrug off ballot access for the ticket in Ohio, where Trump will win anyway, they have at least a theoretical opening to get someone nominated that can compete in the battleground states that Biden is clearly losing now and regressing by the day.

And the window might even close sooner than that. Donna Brazile declared on Friday that the DNC needs to accelerate the delegate vote to lock Biden onto the ticket:

AMERICANA: You’ve defended the idea of a virtual vote, before the convention, even after the debate. Why?

DONNA BRAZILE: Well, we made the decision back in May, before the debate. And I think for the party, and the convention committees to change the rules in the middle of the game — well, that’s called cheating. Nothing has changed. Joe Biden won. He secured the nomination, months ago. He’s the presumptive nominee. We made the decision based on what was happening in the states — in particular Ohio, but we were also hearing some silliness from other states. And I believe the vote was 300 yes votes, two no votes, and five abstentions.

I don’t believe we’re in a position to overturn the will of the party or the convention delegates. This process will now go to the convention rules committee. They will have another vote on this matter. And then it goes to the credentials committee, who will ultimately ensure that people receive the ballot that complies with the call to the convention. That’s the procedure. I’m not about to storm the White House the way some Republicans allowed their activists to storm the Capitol. This is not a time to do anything but to stand by the rules.

The problem with freezing Biden in place is that he's not going to get any better as time goes on. He's had several public exposures of his infirmity, which Democrats and the media could blame on "cheap fakes" and Republican conspiracy theories until the debate blew the cover-up into smithereens. The presser on Thursday didn't undo his debate collapse, and neither will a handful of stage appearances. It's only a matter of time before Biden's infirmities get exposed in public again, and when it happens -- and when is the functional term here -- the blowback on the deniers will get even more fierce, especially within the Democrat Party.

That's why this Sanders op-ed is a gift to the GOP as well as Biden. Sanders probably made it impossible to get Biden to agree to withdraw with this endorsement, and Biden not only can't win, he's likely to lose on a scale that will damage Democrats all the way down the ballot. That's why Democrats are despairing this week, and they're right to do so, even if they brought all of this on themselves by covering up Joe Biden's cognitive decline with lies and gaslighting.