Maybe They Have A Point

In a post last week, I said I was skeptical of reports that some Democrats are trying to find a younger candidate who can replace Joe Biden as their 2024 nominee because, as I said at that time, Joe Biden is their only hope of claiming to maintain the nearly expired New Deal coalition. In fact, it seems to me that if they want a viable national candidate who could actually do this, they have a perfectly good one in Robert Kennedy Jr, whom they currently abjure.

This isn't to say that they don't see a legitimate problem in Biden, although yet again, I don't think a medical diagnosis is needed to point it out. Take his meeting with Israel's President Herzog at the White House Tuesday, where he's reported to have said,

“The Israelis and the Palestinians… uh… on a political level… They uh, and… uh… They uh… And, I… Agwai endhole and whole shegwam… And uh…” said Biden.

The fact-checkers insisted that the big guy wasn't asleep, he was just reading from notes in his lap, but that didn't excuse his detached, offhand, garbled delivery.

Or take his Philadelphia speech yesterday:

“How many times you read in inflat—that a recession’s comin’?” Biden said in garbled fashion. “They’ven wall street today said no you’ll don’t say resheck comin’ now!”

I’m just going to take a wild guess and say that isn’t what it said on the teleprompter. . . . I tip my hat to the folks at the Townhall Twitter account for that translation because that certainly had to be a bit of a challenge.

The commentator goes on to wonder if Biden might even be having a stroke, but again, this needs a medical diagnosis that neither he nor I is qualified to give. I think a more likely explanation is suggested by this story from Politico on Tuesday:

President Joe Biden will make his longtime residence of Wilmington, Del., the headquarters of his 2024 campaign, he announced Tuesday.

“My family’s values, my eternal optimism and my unwavering belief in the American middle class as our nation’s backbone comes from my home — from Delaware,” Biden said in a statement.

Insofar as there's been comment about this at all, it's taken as an indication he expects to run the same sort of "front porch" campaign he ran in 2020, although even then, his actual campaign headquarters was in Philadelphia. It seems to me that given his character -- he's lazy, grandiose, and entitled (I don't need to be a medical professional to say this) -- this is a fully consistent strategy for him to take, and it's consistent with the attitude we saw in the recent public appearances I cited above.

As for his photo op with Isaac Herzog, it's indisputable that Herzog was there as a supplicant, and Biden's delivery and overall demeanor brutally reinforced this. Biden, after all, is the most powerful man in the world, he's fully aware of it, and dealing with supplicants, especially an Isreali supplicant, is an annoyance. His handlers have already made all the policy decisions, he's already signed whatever they've told him to sign, and his presence in the Oval Office is entirely pro forma. Get it over with, it's a big waste of time.

He reinforces this with a heavy-lidded lack of affect as he ostentatiusly gives a garbled reading from notes in his lap. He's neither sick nor senile, he's just incredibly bored. At his Philadelphia appearance, according to RedState,

After the story that broke over the past day about his staff having to make “accommodations” for his issues, Biden came trotting out, trying to look vigorous. But then he kind of blew that immediately, by then stopping suddenly, throwing his arms up, and telling someone up in one of the seats, “Don’t jump!” — that weird thing that he keeps doing.

As I've been saying all along, Biden sees himself as a skilled Machiavellian manipulator, operating in a behind-the-scenes dimension of Realpolitik beyond conventional expectations. With moves like that, he's simply flipping the bird to his own staff, who apparently urge him not to say all those dumb things. He'll say what he pleases, he'll do what he pleases, and he'll wander off the stage as he pleases, godammit. He'd just as soon be home in Wilmingon; this other stuff is a waste of his valuable time.

What may be bothering the Democrats who're trying to find a better candidate most isn't a possible medical condition, it's that Joe is conscious, aware of his environment, and making fully informed decisions based on his own appraisal, however cynical, of the political circumstances. As far as I can see, he doesn't think much has effectively changed since 2020, and he's simply going to repeat his 2020 stategy. I have a feeling that the Dunning-Kruger effect will be validated here, probably sooner than later.

I suppose if I were a Democrat strategist, I'd be nervous, too -- but what can they change?