You might think that the Super Bowl was received as a welcomed diversion from the staggeringly bad year President Joe Biden had last Thursday. Sure, Taylor Swift was happy. Travis Kelce was not happy for a while until they won. Then, he was happy, too. But what about Joe Biden? Was he happy? Was Dr. Jill Biden happy? Probably not.
Before Super Bowl XXXVIII in 2004, George W. Bush sat down with Jim Nance as the Global War on Terror was continuing to unfold in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was a serious and substantive interview. Barack Obama made pre-game interviews on Super Sunday a regular tradition beginning in 2009. Donald Trump continued it for his four years in office. Joe Biden? He's skipped the last two.
You'd think if the Sunday show surrogates making the rounds to claim Joe Biden is sharp, focused, and alert were telling you the truth, an opportunity to speak to literally a third of the country in one sitting would not be missed. But the problem with Joe Biden is he's not up to it. Any of it. The job, the pressure, the media, the issue sets. He's just too far gone to not risk adding evidentiary fuel to the polling fire that Americans think he's too old to be president.
Instead of granting an interview, the addled president made a short video to complain about shrinkflation, a byproduct of his own economic policies. Here's the video.
It's 48 seconds, and there are 12 jump cuts in it. 12. That's an average of an edit every 4 seconds. After the game, someone on Biden's team decided this was what was needed for his social media feed on Twitter/X.
Just like we drew it up. pic.twitter.com/9NBvc5nVZE
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) February 12, 2024
So we're back to the myth of Dark Brandon, I see. Somehow, especially after last Thursday's press conference disaster for the ages, red laser beams aren't what I expect to see from Ol' Squinty. Now Dr. Jill? That, I do believe. Laser eyes apparently is what took place in the West Wing after she witnessed the debacle. She wanted to know who was responsible and why it wasn't stopped.
How bad was the presser? James Carville was on CNN talking about possibly replacing Biden at the Democratic convention this summer.
His co-Bill Clinton strategist, Paul Begala, knows it was really bad.
Rep. Adam Smith of Washington was the first to try to separate the concept of old versus incompetent.
He's too physically weak to campaign, but he's otherwise in decent enough shape, is the pith of his gist. Biden's beleaguered Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, tried to shore up Biden with his assessment of his boss.
But here's the big problem. It wasn't just Biden's performance on Thursday that has alarmed Americans about the prospects for a second Biden term. It's a cumulative decline that's been on display. If Joe Biden were to make it to the convention and actually accept the nomination and run a general election campaign, expect this to play in prime time at the Republican convention.
For the record, I take no joy in pointing out that Joe Biden is a gnat's eyelash away from drooling on camera. Joe Concha on Fox News had this reaction.
But what are other liberals thinking? Bob Costas, formerly of NBC Sports, was a guest on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher. He's ready to push Biden out by force if necessary.
Okay, now we're getting serious. There are plenty of Democrats that will tell you that they're not worried, because Donald Trump is the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party, and Biden will beat him just like he did in 2020. And that may be true. However, when you have polling like this one out of ABC/Ipsos over the weekend, Democratic knees can certainly get wobbly. 86% of Americans, including roughly half of Democrats polled, think Biden's too old to finish another term.
The Washington Post knows Democrats have a problem. The Financial Times knows Democrats have a problem.
Hillary Clinton attempted to make the 'he's old, but not incompetent' argument to Alex Wagner.
I don't think that strategy is going to work any more than the White House's strategy on Thursday after the Hur report dropped, that Biden was off his game during his testimony to the Special Counsel because he was handling an international crisis, that being the October 7th Hamas attacks into Southern Israel. Applying for another four-year term to deal with every major crisis the United States faces while simultaneously admitting Biden wasn't at his best during the last crisis isn't exactly a strong selling point.
The Hur report has already had an impact. From the ABC/Ipsos poll, taken after the report was released and the press conference was given, says this.
A new ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted after the release of the Hur Report finds that a majority of Americans (59%) believe that both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are too old for another term as president. This finding, coming after allegations in Special Counsel Hur’s report of President Joe Biden’s memory lapses, suggests that age will continue to be a factor in the 2024 election. An additional quarter of Americans (27%) say that only Biden is too old to serve another term (but not Trump). Only one in ten Americans (11%) say that neither is too old to serve another term. Partisanship plays a large part in assessments of the candidates’ age with the majority of Republicans (62%) saying only Biden while the majority of both Democrats (69%) and Independents (70%) say both are too old.
I'll leave you with this. Biden's media corner, which primarily consists of CNN and MSNBC, have done their darndest over the weekend to downplay Biden's increasing displays of being decrepit by playing whataboutism. It doesn't matter what you think about how alarming Joe Biden's performance is, the alternative is Trump, which to them is way worse. But Rachel Maddow took deflection to a new art form, declaring that Biden is perfectly fine to continue running the country because he rides a bicycle.
Bicycle riding equals mental acuity, according to Maddow.
Egbon Joe Biden ride bicycle come fall yakata but Chief Amoda ride stationary bicycle to make headlines pic.twitter.com/LfHJ4JUgm4
— Daniel Omokhojie (@ikhanvbode) January 19, 2023
Equating the ability to function as commander-in-chief because he rides a bicycle is about as ludicrous a non-sequitur as me saying my dog knows how to speak Italian because she loves to eat pizza.
The bottom line is Joe Biden's problem is two-fold. He's too old to physically be up to the job. He can't put in the hours being president requires, and his vigor is measured these days as two-shuffle step events. It's a rare good day when you see the President going down the full staircase on or off Air Force 1. But if it were just the physical elements of the job being problematic, he'd be like Pope John Paul II in the latter years of his pontificate. He could barely get around because his body was failing him, but the Pope's mind was sharp right up to the end. That's clearly not the case with Joe Biden.
What's disturbing to anyone who watches Biden stumble at the microphone, at a loss for a word, a sentence, a name, a date, a terrorist group, pausing and stammering until someone in the room bails him out, is that he's losing his mental faculties with each passing day. Rachel Maddow and lefties in media are never going to Peloton spin that away.
Republicans in the House need to force Democrats in both chambers to walk the plank. I'm not necessarily for show votes or stunts, but impeaching Biden, regardless of the outcome, would make it very clear to the American public whether or not Democrats can recognize the obvious and put the country's needs over the party's needs.
Yes, Biden's removal from office would mean Kamala Harris for 8 months. She'd be a disaster. She'd also get pulverized in a general election, because nobody likes her. And it would make show prep for me easy for the rest of the year.
