The Post cheered the stage-managed primary season throughout, running laudatory pieces about “How the DNC challenger-proofed the primaries for Biden” and profiles of the “hidden campaign” Biden ran with the party. The paper noted the Biden team’s belief that the president could “seize the advantage of a unified party apparatus” while “splintered” Republicans faced “an increasingly bitter primary battle between Trump and his rivals for the presidential nomination.” In reality, Republicans benefited from competition, getting long looks at Trump and rivals like Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy, while Biden was shielded from competition all the way through his calamitous collapse in the middle of a general election season.

For all that, Biden still received millions of Democratic votes this year, and won both primary and general election processes in 2020. Though many like me believe Biden is already incapacitated and should leave office now, that number doesn’t include writers at the Post. Greg Jaffe merely noted that Biden’s “meandering” debate performance left “doubts among both the party’s elite and its base that he could defeat former president Donald Trump.” He isn’t suggesting Biden is unfit to be president now, just that he’d likely lose to Trump and/or have a hard time serving out a second term. Under those conditions, Biden would have every right to stick it out and compete for re-election. After all, those primary votes are his, aren’t they?

Not according to the Post. For the crime of refusing to instantly concede to unelected pooh-bahs that he’s “no longer capable of mounting an effective campaign,” Biden earned the ultimate demerit: the paper compared him to Trump!