Op-Ed by Brian Cates
I’ve watched in a kind of awful fascination over the past few weeks as all the pieces moved into place, hardly daring to believe what I was seeing.
But the recent events of Super Tuesday now leave no doubt. The Democrats are going to give their nomination to Joe Biden. And I’m grappling for a polite way to say this, but Mr. Biden appears to be struggling with dementia. I am far from the only person who has noticed this sad development. People who watched him speak just a few years ago cannot help but comment on his recent struggles.
Biden has committed so many slips and gaffes and mental lapses in recent weeks that it has become a regular feature of the 2020 election coverage. People actually **expect** it at this point. Almost every day there is new video showing an instance of Biden not knowing what state he’s in, what job he’s running for, or who is standing next to him on the stage.
President Trump has already pointedly commented several times on Biden’s mental slips. At his recent town hall event held on Fox News, Trump said "There’s something going on there.”
Later, Trump tweeted that:
“I will protect your Social Security and Medicare, just as I have for the past 3 years. Sleepy Joe Biden will destroy both in very short order, and he won’t even know he’s doing it!”
The mainstream media simply cannot hide Biden’s cognitive issues for 8 months. He will be in the public eye almost nonstop until election day, speaking at a multitude of rallies and events. How many more videos of him having a mental lapse would end up going viral by November 3rd?
And let’s not forget Biden will have to do at least three debates with Donald Trump, as well as sitting down for full length interviews with media reporters. That will be hours and hours of news coverage that is often live.
Progressive Leftists are already calling each other out over their differing views on how to handle this troublesome issue, as this exchange between author Matthew Stoller and Neera Tanden demonstrates:
Tanden is the president of The Center for American Progress. Stoller is an accomplished author and contributor at The Guardian, a fellow at The Federalist Society as well as The Open Markets Institute.
The conversation continued later. Note Tanden concedes that Stoller is a progressive himself in good standing, and any look through his Twitter timeline will demonstrate he is about as anti-Trump as anybody on the Left.
I could sit here all day pondering how it came to this or why the Democratic Party leadership boxed itself into this trap, but this is what they’ve done. So instead I’ll focus on the practical ramifications of this.
Could Biden really make it to election day itself without disqualifying himself through multiple mental incidents? With the frequency of the incidents I’ve seen thus far since Biden announced his candidacy in April of last year, I do not see how.
Not even frantic and relentless gas-lighting by the Democratic Party and the DNC Media Complex [but I repeat myself!] could hide Biden’s true condition from the American public. At some point, the efforts to explain away what the audience is seeing descends into farce.
What makes this development so ironic is the fact Trump’s critics spent much of the past five years attacking his mental acuity, even to the point of publicly going after former White House physician Ronny Jackson and forcing him out of that job because he wouldn’t say Trump was suffering from dementia. Instead Jackson frustrated the Left by insisting the President was mentally sharp and in excellent health.
After years of snidely insisting Trump is insane and demented, Democrats have now handed front-runner status to a man who can’t even get through a very brief seven minute speech at a campaign rally without obvious mental snafus – even with the help of a teleprompter.
If you consider how the Democratic Party and the mainstream media worked hand-in-glove to hide candidate Hillary Clinton’s health issues during the 2016 contest – including the now infamous incident that occurred at a 9/11 memorial event – as some kind of dry run for this attempt to cover up for Biden, you are comparing apples to oranges.
If a citizen had not been there to film Clinton being literally picked up and tossed into the back of van –one of her very expensive shoes was left behind– and had that video not quickly gone viral, there would have been no admission whatsoever that the Clinton incident had even occurred. They only made the admission she had ‘fainted’ from the ‘heat’ because they were forced to.
Had it been presidential candidate Donald J. Trump having a physical incident like that and collapsing at a public event, having to be picked up and thrown into a van by security personnel back in 2016, I hardly need to point out how vastly different the media coverage would have been, do I?
Reporters across the fruited plain would have immediately screeched that Trump’s health issues demonstrated by such an episode disqualified him from being considered for the nation's top job.
The difference between Hillary’s episode and Biden’s is that Clinton was otherwise apparently fine, and she recovered enough to even go outside and wave to the media shortly after her abrupt exit from the 9/11 memorial event. Biden’s problem is of a completely different nature.
Biden isn’t **physically** collapsing, he’s **mentally** collapsing. Such episodes are impossible to predict or prevent, so the longer he stays on the campaign trail, the more examples of his cognitive decline are going to be provided to the watching public.
Is Biden A Placeholder?
There is much speculation among the pundit class that Biden is only being used as a ‘placeholder’ nominee until the Democratic Party leadership can belatedly draft someone at the Democratic National Convention [DNC] which is being held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin this July.
Even assuming this happens, July is still over four and a half months away. That leaves Biden twisting in the wind until then.
Assuming the party leadership opts to give the nomination to someone else, who would they choose to replace Biden?
Rumors have abounded for months that there has been a secret plan in place all along to wait to spring a surprise Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama nomination on the Democratic base at the convention.
I have a hard time buying these rumors. Hillary has been secretly plotting to have the DNC hand her the nomination on a silver platter after a rather large host of candidates had hit the trail for almost a year? Michelle Obama is smiling to herself as it all falls into place to allow her to suddenly appear at the convention as the party’s designated savior?
Let’s get real here. Hillary has not been secretly plotting to become a three-time loser. There is no grand plan for Michelle Obama to spend from July to November campaigning as 'The Designated Victim' of the coming Trump landslide.
Don’t get me wrong, part of me is hoping this happens. The manifest fury of the Bernie Sanders supporters at watching the DNC hand Hillary the nomination again after their guy campaigned for over a year would be an epic sight to behold.
I’m aware of certain experts predicting a Trump loss to the Democratic candidate due to election interference by social media companies that are being commonly referred to as “Big Tech”. That will be the subject of a future column.
For right now let me say this: Super Tuesday showed me where all the voter enthusiasm is. And it is not with the Democratic party, and it certainly won’t be the longer the party’s front-runner is an elderly fellow very publicly struggling with his memory.
This is how badly the Democrats are losing to Trump and the GOP at this point: there are no good options left, they are now in the position of trying to pick the least worst outcome.
Brian Cates entered the political arena in March 2012, following the death of Andrew Breitbart. He is currently a political columnist for The Epoch Times and UncoverDC. Brian is based in South Texas and is the author of: “Nobody Asked For My Opinion … But Here It Is Anyway!”
Twitter: @drawandstrike
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