How Do You Solve A Problem Like Joe Biden?

Ever since the G7 "cheap fake" vignettes, outlets across the board have been spitballing new strategies to replace Joe on the November ballot. Via the UK Daily Mail,

[I]t seems no matter how much cold water the Biden campaign or Democratic Party throw on this raging fire of speculation, Americans will not be put off the Great Joe Biden Replacement Theory.

It's the idea that somehow, some way the President will be swapped out as the Democratic Party's candidate ahead of the 2024 election.

But the obstacle is always Kamala, who is the other horn of the dilemma. The Daily Mail points this out:

[The substitute] would not be Vice President Kamala Harris, according to sources, who observed that Harris has already had to fend off a push to replace her on the ticket.

'It doesn't just become Kamala. Kamala only becomes the nominee if Biden dies,' one blunt consultant said.

Another Democratic political insider believes that Harris has failed so badly as vice president that she has made it nearly impossible for Biden to step aside – because the party would have to contend with progressive blowback over passing over the potential first black woman president.

The "only if Biden dies" scenario isn't completely accurate. If Biden is forced to resign as president before Inauguration Day 2025, or if the 25th Amendment is invoked, Kamala becomes president, for however short a time. My own feeling is that the likelihood of this is at least non-trivial, and it's the only realistic way Joe can be replaced on the ticket short of him dying.

How bad is Joe's condition, really? One indication is the White House's extreme unwillingness to release the tapes of Special Counsel Robert Hur's interview of Joe last October:

House Republicans are demanding the [Justice] department turn over audio recordings of the interview special counsel Hur conducted with Biden in October 2023, about Biden's handling of classified documents after leaving the Obama administration.

. . . At a hearing Thursday, Chairman Jordan of the Judiciary Committee asserted the recordings are necessary because "the transcripts alone are not sufficient evidence of the state of the president's memory."

The implication is that the written transcripts have been redacted to minimize evidence of Biden's deteriorating mental state, which could well be much more evident in the tapes, and the White House's subsequent efforts to discredit videos of Joe freezing at the Juneteenth event and the Hollywood fundraiser, as well as him wandering away from the group at the G7, indicate the extreme sensitivity with which it views the issue.

It's worth noting that Senate Minority Leader McConnell had two similar public episodes of freezing last year:

For the second time this summer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell froze up while answering questions during a press conference. The Republican stared blankly for about 30 seconds Wednesday afternoon in Kentucky. There was a similar moment for the Senator on Capitol Hill last month.

McConnell announced his retirement as Republican leader this past February, sayiong at the time,

One of life’s most underappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter, so I stand before you today, Mr. President and my colleagues, to say this will be my last term as Republican leader of the Senate.

It was speculated that health concerns led to his decision:

Health issues for McConnell, 82, almost certainly played a role in his decision. Last March, he sustained a concussion and fractured a rib when he took a bad fall at a private dinner at a Washington hotel, sidelining him for six weeks.

Then in July, McConnell froze for 19 seconds at a news conference in the Capitol, worrying colleagues who said they had noticed a change in the longtime leader and they believed the fall had taken a toll. He appeared to freeze a second time at a Kentucky event the following month.

I continue to wonder how much the White House has been concealing the actual extent of Biden's decline, which has been hinted at in the foreign press more than here:

“Biden isn’t the man he used to be,” a June editorial story from The Independent, a U.K. newspaper, reads. “A failure to take the mounting evidence seriously risks not only a collapse of trust in the White House that will affect future presidents but the specter of real crises during a second Biden term.”

. . . International media outlets especially covered concerns surrounding Biden after Department of Justice Special Counsel Robert Hur released a report in February regarding Biden’s possible mishandling of classified documents. The report recommended not pursuing charges against Biden because he presented himself as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and a jury would likely find him not guilty.

Biden held a press conference the same day the report was released and criticized Hur’s report, but made a series of slip-ups during remarks and shouted at reporters, which some media outlets claimed highlighted Hur’s findings.

. . . “The numerous references in the report to Joe Biden’s failing memory. . . give unprecedented force to questions about his physical and mental capacity to stand again,” a news story from French outlet Le Monde wrote about the Hur report. “The worrying episodes are increasing.”

To some extent, the references to Joe's ability to run for re-election are polite. The November election is still over four months away, but Joe's campaign is clearly faltering long before traditional presidential campaigns even start. On one hand, the possibility of some new crisis demanding the president's full attention can't be ruled out, while on the other, Joe can't stand an infinite number of new episodes that call his condition into question.

It's likely that Sen McConnell's resignation as Republican leader was prompted by behind-the-scenes pressure, as well as Trump's statement, only a week before the senator's announcement, that he "wasn't sure" if he could work with McConnell. Right now, we don't know what sort of pressure may be happening for Joe behind the scenes already. Nevertheless, as of 2024, Trump is displaying far greater political strength out of office, for instance in his ability to force McConnell's retirement, than he had during his actual term.

For Kamala to succeed to the presidency between now and Inauguration Day presents a problem for national leadership in both parties, and even its potential represents a constitutional crisis. I suspect a few people close to Trump are gaming this out, and I think the likelihood of something like this happening is greater than anyone expects. I think the current situation is neither stable nor sustainable for long.

The Low-Bar Problem

YIKES: Watch Joe Biden incoherently babble at his Hollywood fundraiser as Obama looks on in SHOCK.

This is so bad…

pic.twitter.com/W7WsF74zvM

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) June 17, 2024

The conventional wisdom, even before the 2024 presidential debate dates were set, has been that Joe's handlers will be able to prep him well enough for the first debate, now a little over a week away, that he'll surpass a low-bar standard and "win" the debate against Trump simply by avoiding major embarrassments. For instance,

Biden’s performance at his State of the Union address — which went over largely well and led to many public reconsiderations of whether he was too diminished to run for a second term — is very much on the minds of some Trump aides. They expect that Biden’s team will get him into similar shape ahead of the debate.

As of now, even though I'm a contrarian in any case, I have serious doubts about this. The CNN story at the link was written last month, and it uses the history of both Biden's and Trump's past debate preps to try to predict the future. The piece continues,

People who have been in previous debate preps sessions with [Biden] said they can be exhausting and, for long stretches, not productive. He prefers sitting around a table covered in policy binders, trying to explain himself in long answers in ways that he feels like he hasn’t gotten to do and asking whoever he can make eye contact with, “How would you do it?”

Much of the work goes into focusing him, these people who have been in prep with him said, pulling him back to the key point or narrative that aides have identified.

And that was Joe in 2020. There seems to be a consensus that he's not like that in 2024, he has good days and bad; he checks in, and he checks out.

But multiple prominent Democrats said they worry Biden can’t come off as robust next to Trump. They live a daily nightmare imagining some kind of trip up, literal or verbal, that becomes the one Biden can’t come back from, and they think the debate stage seems like the obvious place where this could happen.

On the other hand, there's an expectation in some quarters that Trump won't be able to control himself. Here's a think piece at Real Clear Politics yesterday:

Every question from pro-Democrat moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash and every taunting response from President Biden about threats to democracy will be an opportunity for Trump to lose his temper or to alienate moderate voters with intemperate replies.

. . . Remember, this debate and another one in early September were proposed by Biden at a time when he was trending badly behind Trump in the polls, especially in battleground states. Presumably, the Biden campaign believed the early debates would shore up his support and hurdle him over the much indicted, and now convicted, former president.

Is this guy trying to imply that something has changed since then, that Joe's doing much better in the polls? If anything, the polls in the artificially designated "battleground" states have remained the same, while Trump is starting to pull ahead in other states like Minnesota and Virginia. It's also starting to look like Biden's staff had expected his trips to Europe for the D-Day commemoration and G7 would make him look presidential going into the debate, when the visuals turned out to be disastrous. But the guy continues,

If Trump remembers to act presidential, and not like an attack dog, there is every reason to believe he will attract voters eager for a change.

This repeats the idea that Trump is basically out of control, a perpetual adolescent who's his own worst enemy. This isn't the Trump we're seeing. He's been pretty clearly following the advice of his counsel, although some part of his legal strategy is also what Alan Dershowitz has recognized is the Chicago Seven defense, deliberately baiting some of the judges and prosecutors into making errors -- and in fact, this has been remarkably effective over the past year. As his indictments have mounted up and verdicts have gone against him, he's just risen in the polls.

This isn't someone who's out of control. He's also very good ex tempore, and he has a standup comic's sense of timing -- but that leaves aside that he simply has a sense of humor, which Biden completely lacks.

Still, even this omits the new inflection of the campaign. The line up to now has been that Biden's "age" is a major campaign issue. But that's putting it politely. The visuals from G7 and the Hollywood fundraiser raise an entirely different question, to which Piers Morgan gave voice yesterday:

I watched the viral clip of Barack Obama taking a frozen Joe Biden by the arm and leading him off stage at their star-studded $30 million LA fundraiser, and posted on X what I suspect everyone who watched it was thinking: “So embarrassing. The Democrats can’t let this go on, surely?”

Within a few hours, a staggering 7.5 million people had viewed my post and many thousands of those had liked, reposted or commented on it.

As I thought, the vast majority shared my honestly held opinion that President Biden is no longer fit for the highest office in America.

The question really is no longer, "Will Joe be able to make it through another four years?" That's been overtaken by events. The question has become, "He really shouldn't be president now, should he?" This has an urgency that in some ways overrides the election. It's an issue that he likely can't be removed from office before next January, and he almost certainly will lose the November election. What can we do to feel comfortable in the meantime?

Piers Morgan continues with the real question:

Biden is supposed to be America’s commander-in-chief but, at what is a very dangerous time for the world, I wouldn’t trust him now to order a restaurant meal let alone a military strike.

So why is he still running?

What I've been seeing, especially since the G7, is that Biden is capable of losing situational awareness at any time and either behaving completely inappropriately, as he did with the Pope Francis headbump, or simply freezing. That suggests to me that as of now, even more than in 2020, any attempt at debate prep is likely to be a futile endeavor. But there's also now absolutely no assurance that he won't simply lose situational awareness during the debate itself. That, of course, raises questions beyond just the debate.

I don't think the low bar scenario is remotely applicable as things now stand. I've been saying for a while that events are going to move more rapidly than people think.

"I Don't Think Mozart's Going To Help At All"

Biden freezes before Obama grabs his arm and leads him off stage. Yikes! 😳 pic.twitter.com/nCgAGitoQ6

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 16, 2024

I wasn't going to post on Joe's freezeup at the Hollywood fundraiser on Saturday -- I was convinced the headbump with Pope Francis was as bad as things could get, and having Barack Obama forced to lead him off the stage was just a weak aftershow.

But I sat up in bed early this morning thinking about the scene in Hitchcock's Vertigo where Midge, John "Scottie" Ferguson's ex-fiancee, visits him in a psychiatric ward where he's recovering after losing his obsessive love Madeleine Elster in her phony suicide.

Scottie is sitting dazed and unresponsive with Mozart playing on a record player. Midge says,

It's Mozart. Wolfgang Amadeus. I had a long talk with that lady in musical therapy, Johnny, and she says that Mozart's the boy for you. The broom that sweeps the cobwebs away. Well, that's what the lady said.

But Midge quickly realizes this isn't the cure. She tells the doctor,

You want to know something? I don't think Mozart's going to help at all.

Looking at Obama essentially giving Joe the bum's rush off the stage at the Hollywood gala, I've got to say whatever Joe's handlers might try to do that's an equivalent to Mozart for Scottie Ferguson, I don't think it's going to help at all.

Here's what nobody has mentioned. Normally when a president -- even a B-minus president like Dubya -- attended a G7 or G8, it was in the context of showcasing his accomplishments. It showed him posing triumphantly with other world leaders, among whom he was pre-eminent. For instance, here's a White House summary of Dubya at the G8 in 2007,

Fact Sheet: The President's Achievements at the G-8 Summit, Heiligendamm, Germany:

The President, In Collaboration With Other Leaders From The G-8 Nations, Took Action To Address A Broad Range Of Global Issues, Including:

• Launching a new global framework to address climate change, energy security, economic growth and sustainable development;
• Committing to partnering with African countries to foster development, especially by enabling the private sector and combating disease;

and blah blah blah. It goes without saying this is officious bombast, presidential fuss and feathers like Hail to the Chief that everyone tunes out, but even in the case of a mediocrity like Dubya, it isn't incongruous. Nobody looked at Dubya at Heiligendamm and wondered why he was there and what awful blunder he would pull next.

Many years ago, I read someone suggesting that Gerald Ford lost the 1976 election simply because he was the subject of failed assassination attempts by two women ( Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme in Sacramento September 5, 1975; and Sara Jane Moore in San Francisco on September 22, 1975).

Of all the other possible reasons for Ford's loss -- especially his pardon of Nixon -- this one immediately struck me as most persuasive. On one hand, that the attempts would be unsuccessful goes to the stereotype of the incompetent woman. On the other, that bumbling women would target Ford canceled his standing as an alpha male.

Fast forward to the G7 in Italy -- Joe wanders away from the other G7 leaders. We can grant that he may even have wandered away for a reason -- perhaps he in fact wanted to congratulate the other parachutists -- but from accounts, this wasn't the script for the events that the leaders agreed. They were all going to shake hands with one guy, not any of the others, to keep the schedule short.

So even if Joe didn't just wander away like grandpa, someone had to get him back with the program, and there we had the inescapable visual. The President of France, that is, the leader of the cheese-eating surrender monkeys, noticed Joe was off script and prompted the Prime Minister of Italy, a short woman in a pink pants suit, to pull Joe back in line.

No amount of after-the-fact spin, no insistence that the visual was a cheap fake, is going to counter the impression that the leader of the free world, the alpha male of alpha males, must be fetched back like an errant toddler by a French guy and an Italian woman.

Heck, we're back to Midge in the Vertigo psychiatric ward murmuring to Scottie, "Mother's here".

If, as I was, you're impressed by a theory that certain events of state can have an outsize effect when a woman shows up in the wrong context, you can at least entertain the thought that this episode alone will cost Joe the election, and not by a narrow margin.

But beyond that, nobody has mentioned that having the president performing on the world stage at all is normally a positive. I've got to think that the White House, planning out the campaign leading into summer, thought having Joe travel to France for the D-Day commemoration and then to the G7 a week later, would give him a natural bump in the polls going into the June 27 debate with Trump.

Instead, they're having to insist yet again that Joe didn't poop his pants, he was just changing his mind about sitting down, and the business of the short Italian lady pulling him back with the group was fiendishly manipulated to be other than it was.

But how does Saturday night's scene of Barack Obama ushering Joe off the Hollywood stage play into this? Several people have observed that Joe's freeze at the end of the show was a lot like his freeze on Juneteenth -- in both cases, he stood still, face expressionless, arms slack at his side, not moving at all for an uncomfortable interval. Far fewer have noted that Dr Jill wasn't with him either time.

My sense of things is that Dr Jill is the only handler who knows Joe well enough to sense instinctively when something like this is coming, and she knows proactively what move to make to forestall it. She can be next to him and already holding his hand and pull him along or prompt him to give some sign that he's in focus. What we saw at both Juneteenth and the Hollywood fundraiser was that neither Barack Obama nor Kamala Harris can function proactively as a handler.

Kamala, even though it seems to have been assumed she'd serve as a handler without Jill there, was jivin' and looking the other way when Joe froze. Barack saw what was happening only after several awkward moments, and when he realized it, he had to use both hands to get Joe going and manhandle him offstage.

This says to me that Joe's condition is such that, at least for some significant part of the time, he needs constant attention when he's in public from someone who can anticipate his various moves and freezes. That's probably only Dr Jill at this point, and to put him in the public eye without her present is a risky proposition.

You want to know something? I don't think Mozart's going to help at all.

Is The Overton Window Half Open Or Half Shut?

I've lately begun to gauge the extent of the Overton window, the range of opinions that can be expressed in public without seeming extreme, by looking at each day's Real Clear Politics menu, along with their aggregate poll listings. There are maybe 20 titles on a typical day, and their sources range from the New York Post on the right to The American Prospect and The Nation on the left, which skews things leftward in my view -- but of course, the poll aggregates do the same, and I'll get to that.

The big thing I've noticed since Joe went to Italy is that RCP hasn't published a single headline that says anything major about Joe's cognitive struggles there. There's been absolutely nothing about Friday's forehead bump with Pope Francis, although the only thing that can reasonably be concluded about it is that Joe completely lost situational awareness and forgot that he was in a diplomatic forum with world leaders, expected to follow closely cicumscribed standards of etiquette, and widely published photos of the forehead bump from several angles leave little room for other interpretations.

As of this morning, the only reference to G7 I've been able to find at all in the RCP menus is Michael Goodwin's Joe Biden is Mired in a Losing Streak at the New York Post. This is a very broad discussion that begins with Hunter's conviction in Delaware, continues through Hunter's looming tax trial, and only then moves to the G7:

It was his second trip to Europe in 10 days and the wear and tear on the 81-year old president was obvious.

Without First Lady Jill Biden by his side to direct him, he looked more confused than usual and at one point had to be herded back to the group by Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, whom Biden weirdly saluted when they met.

Coming just after the White House Juneteenth celebration, where Biden’s hands and body stood frozen as people around him clapped and swayed to music, the behavior stoked concern among his peers.

G-7 insiders talked of him “losing focus” during discussions, with one saying Biden’s condition is “the worst he has ever been,” according to media reports.

Goodwin doesn't mention the head bump with Francis at all, which is odd, because Joe's defenders have been able to argue that the vignette of him wandering away from the others at the skydiving demonstration was out of context, he was congratulating someone out of camera range, blah blah. But as I said above, the forehead bump leaves far less room for spin. And Goodwin doesn't mention it -- so far, that's been the only discussion of the G7 at RCP.

I've mentioned the commentators who've said, correctly, that the Wall Street Journal story early this month on Joe's real condition behind the scenes was just a "permission slip" that opened the subject up for polite discussion -- but clearly the discussion must remain polite. The G7 business is just one of several campaign hurdles Joe must surmount, not a much more significant indicator that he's not fit for office, and this situation has been concealed from the public for many months -- that's still not a polite thing to say.

But what we're hearing on backgound, first from the Wall Street Journal and now from G7 diplomatic circles, is that Joe has good days and bad ones, he checks in and out. This in itself is probably a polite and diplomatic way of putting things. In the context of the upcoming June 27 debate, it throws into question the basic assumption expressed by Trump himself and many others, that Joe's handlers can somehow program set-piece responses to certain questions and keep him pumped up with energy drinks or whatever that will let him exceed low expectations and "win" the debate.

The informed subtext more recently is that that may have been possible in 2020, but this is now, and Joe has gotten considerably worse in recent months. It's even within the Overton window to say he checks in and out, and this is simply visible to everyone in recent appearances. I don't think at this point, though, that his good days or focused moods can be predicted or managed any more, and the debate is going to be a real crap shoot.

But let's move to RCP and the polls, where the Overton window is clearly being manipulated. The conventional wisdom even before Trump began to rise in the polls last fall was that 2024 was going to be a close election. Nobody disputed that. The conventional wisdom established that it would be won via a narrow electoral college victory in certain "battleground" states. RCP has been a major factor in establishing this paradigm. But two things are falling out: the first is that certain states even on the RCP list, like North Carolina, have never really been in play for Biden.

So why does RCP retain North Carolina as a "battleground"? I suspect one reason is that taking North Carolina off the list would be a first acknowledgement that the consensus paradigm is off, so they can't do it. But the other "battlegrounds" have also broken into two groups, although Trump consistently leads in the aggregates for all of them. One group, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada, shows Trump ahead by 4 or 5 points, and those are looking more like North Carolina, no longer really "battlegrounds". The second group, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, shows Trump ahead by slimmer margins, although he's still ahead. Those in the second group are more credibly "battlegrounds".

But now, although still outside the window of polite discussion, people have begun to mention states like Minnesota and Virginia as "in play". For instance,

Polling outfit Decision Desk HQ released some stunning numbers Friday, showing Donald Trump ever so slightly ahead in two blue states that went for Biden in the last election, which could spell doom for the president’s reelection if they turn on him in November. The survey showed Trump up an ever-so-teeny 0.2 percent in Virginia and an absolutely eye-opening 1.6 percent in Minnesota.

It seems to me that the "close election" paradigm hinging on the "battleground" states of 2016 and 2020 is beginning to fail. As of right now, it seems likely that Joe can at best carry only two or three of those "battlegrounds", which makes his chances of a narrow Electoral College victory slimmer and slimmer. But with polling data coming in that Minnesota and Virginia are already in play, this puts a potential wider Trump Electoral College victory within the realm of possibility, which renders the whole "battleground" model inoperative.

I briefly thought of suggesting to RCP that, for instance, they revise the list of "battlegrounds" and take at minimum, say, North Carolina and Nevada off the list, since Trump is ahead by over 5 points in both, start running aggregates for Minnesota and Virginia, and place them on the "battleground" list instead. That would give a list that would show the real tipping-point states. Might not that provide more of a horse race?

But then I realized that a horse race is not what RCP wants to show. As Rush Limbaugh said, the polls aren't meant to report the news, they're meant to shape it. RCP wants the election to be close. One of today's headlines on today's menu there is another Biden Could Lose the Popular Vote and Still Win, which pooh-poohs

a whole industry out there engaged in spinning polls and shifting expectations to show that Donald Trump is going to win by a massive landslide, sweeping godless woke liberalism out of power in Washington and instituting his long-promised era of vengeance and vindication.

But he falls back for his support on the Sean Trende piece I discussed Wednesday, in which Trende wants to assume there are massive polling errors in favor of Trump in Trende's own "battleground" aggregates that overestimate Biden's losses among youth, blacks, and Latins, allowing Biden ultimately to squeak by 270-268 in the Electoral College.

The problem is, of course, that the writer here is still forced to acknowledge the other possibility:

Obviously if Trump actually wins Virginia it would be a big deal, putting 13 precious electoral votes he’s never won before into his column.

But if RCP can keep the Overton window half shut, nobody needs to worry too much. At least for now.

the Cambridge ladies do not care, above
Cambridge if sometimes in its box of
sky lavender and cornerless, the
moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy

They're Getting Tired Of The Charade

It's worth pointing out that the "meanderer in chief" episode in Italy took place on Thursday, while Joe's bizarre forehead bump with Pope Francis took place yesterday.

Out of curiosity, I looked up the established protocol for meeting a pontiff. According to wikiHow, the rules are in part, especially for Catholics like Joe,

Genuflect as the Pope approaches. If the Pope approaches you directly, you should kneel with your right knee bent to the floor. . . . Genuflection is a sign of high respect.

If you are Catholic and if the Pope offers you his hand, that would be an appropriate time to plant a quick yet respectful kiss on the Piscatory ring, also known as the Ring of the Fisherman, traditionally worn by the Pope. . . . By kissing it, you show both respect and sincere affection for the man who holds that office.

. . . Speak respectfully, clearly, and concisely. Plan what to say beforehand so that you do not stumble too much over your words, and maintain a tone that is both clear and respectful the entire time. . . . The Pope will guide the conversation, and you should let him do so. Keep your answers direct and brief, and speak in a clear, loud voice so that the Pope can hear you.

But those rules apply mainly to Catholics. On the other hand, both Joe and the Holy Father are, diplomatically speaking, also heads of state. The normal rules for such a meeting, according to Quora, are:

The meetings tend to be very carefully scripted. A full agenda is prepared and people tend to stick too it. Both parties will actually know to a great degree of certainty what the other will say.

. . . You would be well advised to inquire in advance about expected protocols . . . . Bear in mind that you will be seen as representing America. Do so respectfully. Don't be Donald Trump! [sic]

Well, when Joe ran into Pope Francis, he definitely wasn't Donald Trump -- he was infinitely more gauche. Every indication from accounts of the forehead-bump encounter is that Francis was surprised and somewhat taken aback, the sort of thing that absolutely does not happen in a normal diplomatic context. But even accounts of ordinary people who met Christ in the gospels show Him treated with high respect, for instance in His encounter with the Canaanite woman im Matthew 15: 22-28:

22 And behold, a Canaanite woman of that district came and called out, “Have pity on me, Lord, Son of David! My daughter is tormented by a demon.” 23 But he did not say a word in answer to her. His disciples came and asked him, “Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us.” 24 He said in reply, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 25 But the woman came and did him homage, saying, “Lord, help me.” 26 He said in reply, “It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” 27 She said, “Please, Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table of their masters.” 28 Then Jesus said to her in reply, “O woman, great is your faith!* Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed from that hour.

The only conclusion I can come to here is that Joe completely lost situational awareness -- he didn't act as a Catholic should, conveying great respect via his body language, and he didn't act anything like a head of state in a diplomatic context, surrounded by other heads of state and recognizing his official role in representing the US. Even gentiles who met Christ, whose vicar Francis currently is, treated Him with respect, even in their worst moments -- nobody bumped His forehead when they met Him.

By contrast, even hostile accounts of Donald Trump's meeting with Pope Francis indicate that Trump behaved according to appropriate protocol for both a non-Catholic and a head of state, and indeed, although Francis began the meeting with a stonefaced expression,

Francis' mood lightened considerably during their gift exchange and the two men shook hands before parting.

"Thank you. Thank you. I won't forget what you said," Trump told the pope after their private meeting.

Actually, I gave quite a bit of thought to what sort of behavioral pattern Joe displayed during the forehead-bump encounter, and I could only conclude that he was acting like a toddler. There's no question that if an actual toddler climbed onto Francis's lap, he or she might go one step farther and bump his forehead, and Francis in the spirit of Matthew 19:14 would presumably welcome the gesture -- but what we had here was an adult head of state in a business suit who's expected to act in a highly circumscribed manner, but he's completely forgotten where he is.

Let's ask the next question: why did this happen when it did? The answer is clear: Dr Jill or another handler is normally with him. Somehow, he was let loose in the general G7 gathering with Pope Francis, and Dr Jill wasn't there to keep him on the usual short leash:

First lady Dr. Jill Biden is hitting the campaign trail on a double mission this week, courting older voters to support her husband’s reelection bid while also tackling voters’ concerns about his age.

. . . “Joe Biden is a healthy, wise 81-year-old ready and willing to work for you every day to make our future better,” she added. “Joe isn’t one of the most effective presidents of our lives in spite of his age, but because of it.”

Her remarks came at her first stop of a three-day campaign swing through Wisconsin, Minnesota, California, Nevada and Arizona.

Let's keep in mind that in France the previous week, Dr Jill appears to have been with him almost constantly in his public appearances, holding his hand, one would suspect, not just as a gesture of affection, but to hold him steady and even more important, to restrain him. Remember that on Thursday in Italy, without Dr Jill, not only did Joe offer the diplomatic kiss on both cheeks to Prime Minister Meloni, but he went on to sniff her hair. I assume Dr Jill would have been able to forestall this if she'd been present.

I can only conclude that we haven't seen as much of Joe completely losing situational awareness as he repeatedly did in Italy because Dr Jill or other handlers have been able to shield him or restrain him in public environments, and his encounters have been more carefully controlled. If Dr Jill steps away, we get these episodes -- we had something similar at the Juneteenth event on Monday, where Vice President Harris was assigned to stand next to him and presumably keep him focused. But she got caught up in jivin' with the rest of the front row and didn't notice Joe wasn't jivin'.

George Floyd's brother Philonise finally stepped in and did what Kamala should have done and "suddenly wrapped his arm around the president, footage of the moment shows". Well, if you were Kamala, would you want to wrap your arm around Joe? Give Philonese a medal.

You know what? I think even Dr Jill is sick of minding Joe 24/7, and Kamala sure doesn't want to do it. Heck, Dr Jill decided to do a campaign swing to California while Joe was in Italy, putting herself even farther from the guy than usual. That's why we're beginning to see so much more of what we're seeing. Everyone's getting tired of the charade. Even Dr Jill.

This Can No Longer Be Ignored

WHAT IS BIDEN DOING? pic.twitter.com/iY33K2srII

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 13, 2024

Up tp now, I've been extremely reluctant to come to any medical-related conclusion about Joe's condition. Yesterday's vignette from Italy above changed my mind -- it shows him wandering away from the group of G7 leaders watching a skydiving demonstration. I've had several relatives who were affected by dementia, and what Joe did there was a little too familiar. According to the Mayo Clinic,

Wandering and becoming lost is common among people with Alzheimer's disease or other disorders causing dementia. This behavior can happen in the early stages of dementia — even if the person has never wandered in the past.

. . . Wandering isn't necessarily harmful if it occurs in a safe and controlled environment.

The G7 meeting is about as safe and controlled an environment as you can find, but what we see in the video clip is Joe apparently becoming distracted from the main event, wandering a few paces away from the group, and then becoming confused. Prime Minister Meloni belatedly recognizes the problem, possibly prompted by President Macron, steps over and seizes him gently by the elbow, and pulls him back. Joe, apparently sensing that something was off but not quite understanding exactly what, compensates by putting on his sunglasses.

Once again, I'm not a medical professional, I haven't examined the president in person, and I'm not qualified to make a medical diagnosis. On the other hand, if you do a search of web sites that give advice on wandering, none of them tells you to get a medical diagnosis -- they seem to assume you recognize the symptoms easily enough, and they just tell you to implement preventive measures, which can certainly include placement in a memory care facility.

Here's a post on X, for what it's worth:

Worrying scoop from G7 as diplomatic source tells me Biden “losing focus” in world leader sessions here in Italy.

Another says “it’s worst he’s even been” at an international summit….https://t.co/QIh9By3Eh3 pic.twitter.com/YtRVRRLkca

— Harry Cole (@MrHarryCole) June 14, 2024

Harry Cole is the Political Editor of the UK Sun, so we may surmise that he does have diplomatic sources with credibilty on the subject. He expanded in an article at the Sun:

"He's losing focus in meetings. Sometimes he's very sharp sometimes, he's very much not. So some worrying developments there.

. . . "Everyone's putting a slight brave face on it this morning. We've got some more for that for the paper tomorrow. But you can see from that footage yourself, can't you?

"This is getting embarrassing now. It makes you really wonder how President Biden is going to be able to run an election campaign in October and November for re election and if that is a man who really thinks he's going to get through the next four years?"

But this is just the fallout from from this week's G7 meeting. Apparently before the G7 episode yesterday went viral, Byron York, a highly conventional sort of guy, wrote in the Washington Examiner,

On Monday evening, the president attended a Juneteenth concert on the White House lawn. It wasn’t a complicated event, as presidential appearances go. All President Joe Biden had to do was walk out of the White House, join the crowd listening to the music, and make some brief remarks.

. . . Everyone was standing and swaying and clapping to singer Kirk Franklin’s performance. Everyone, that is, except Biden. As the scene unfolded around him, the president stood still and absolutely motionless, his hands hanging by his side. His face had a frozen expression, and his eyes seemed fixed, staring straight ahead. This went on for about a minute.

Look at your watch or phone and set it for a minute. It’s a long time. Biden was briefly engaged by Floyd, then resumed staring. Finally, he seemed to come out of it, ending the episode.

A few commentators have compared this to Mitch McConnell's "brain freeze" episodes last summer:

The Republican leader in the US Senate, Mitch McConnell, experienced another public health scare on Wednesday when he appeared to freeze for more than 30 seconds while speaking to reporters in his home state, Kentucky.

McConnell, 81, was eventually escorted away by staff, footage from an NBC News affiliate showed.

Asked for his thoughts about running for re-election in 2026, McConnell laughed and said: “Oh, that’s a … ” He then appeared to freeze.

Possibly in response to these episodes, McConnell announced that he would retire as Republican Senate leader this past February, but he would hold onto the job until the November election. He's 82. Although the Trump campaign has posted clips of the G7 video, there's been no official commentary on Joe's episode, Newsweek sent an e-mail to the White House, buit so far, there's been no comment.

I can't imagine that nobody is talking about this, or the Juneteenth freeze, or the generally woozy performance last week in France, behind the scenes. According to the Daily Caller,

Republican Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna claimed Thursday on Fox News that lawmakers are “hearing” that President Joe Biden won’t be his party’s nominee.

. . . [Y]ou know, a lot of people realize that Joe Biden is likely not going to be the nominee,” she continued. “Which is from what we’re hearing on Capitol Hill, [Republican California] Representative [Kevin] Kiley had reported that Kamala Harris [is] actually eyeing a run for California governor because of it.”

“Right, that’s the backup plan. So you are hearing also in D.C. that Joe Biden isn’t going to be the Democrat nominee?” Watters asked.

“Correct,” Luna responded.

. . . Reports have circulated that top Democratic Party officials are allegedly panicking over the chance that Biden may lose the 2024 election to Trump, according to Politico.

This will make the June 27 debate with Trump all the more important. The problem for Joe is that his condition has visibly worsened in recent months, and pumping him up with whatever is going to have fewer and fewer effects. Beyond that, I've simply got to assume there's a lot we aren't being told -- and oddly, there's been little comentary from anyone on the G7 wandering, and so far, there's been no White House response. This in itself prompts me to follow this story closely.

No Delaware Jury Will Convict A Biden

Jonathan Turley's reaction to Hunter's guilty verdict in his regular column raises a delicate question about why Bidenworld's judgment seems so poor:

[T]he defense had to know that they were increasing the chances of prison time by pursuing a nullification defense. The hope was that Wilmington is Bidentown and no local jury would convict the son of the favorite son of Delaware.

It didn’t work out that way. The team seemed to overplay its hand with defenses that were so implausible as to be insulting for the jury. They suggested that Hunter might not have checked the box or signed the form during a brief window where he was not using drugs. The prosecutors demolished those defenses within two days of the trial.

Turley expanded on his written view in this video clip. At 4:00, he says,

There are reports out today that many of the Biden family believe that a Delaware jury would not convict Hunter Biden, the son of the favorite son of Delaware. . . . So I think there were some in the family who were shocked by the quick verdict.

The way he put things in his column referred to just "the defense" or "the team", but in this Fox interview, he narrows the decision down to "the family" who believed no jury in Bidentown would convict Hunter. By "the family", he could have meant only Joe, Dr Jill, and possibly Hunter's wife and adult daughters.

So this raises the implication that if "the family" called the shots for Hunter's defense in the unrealistic belief that no Delaware jury would convict a Biden, where else is "the family" calling the shots? And if "the family" was off in its reading of the trial, can "the family's" judgment be questioned over other decisions? And who, specifically within "the family", are we talking about?

Jonathan Turley himself is carefully circumspect over this question, although I'm sure he knows the answer. Stephen Kruiser, on the other hand, doesn't beat around the bush.

Jill Biden is undoubtedly the iron fist that directs the cabal that runs her husband's head and administration. Woe be unto anyone who attempts to thwart her ambition to enjoy the perks of being first lady until January 2029, even her beloved Joe and his diminishing mental capacity.

I think this has become an entirely credible assessment, and Turley's implication that Dr Jill is the one who drove Hunter's feckless defense strategy is consistent with it. Kruiser's assessment of the predicament is that Dr Jill simply isn't ready to leave the party:

Jill Biden knows where the bodies are buried and who to lean on to get her way. The nervous desire among Democratic operatives to have a complete do-over on this ticket may very well be building to unstoppable force levels. Sooner or later, however, it will hit the immovable object that is DOCTOR Mama Jill Biden.

I know where my money is going in that one.

But this suggests that Hunter's defense strategy isn't the only area where Dr Jill has called the shots. Let's move to the question of Joe's June 27 debate with Trump, the often-expressed view that this is the decision point for whether Joe stays on the ticket, and how Joe prepares for it. Kruiser, of course, takes the view that Joe will ever leave the ticket is a chimera, and he's probably right. But what can we interpret from the plans we see for Biden's debate prep and Dr Jill's influence on those plans? And if her judgment on Hunter's defense strategy was so poor, what does this say about her plans for Joe's debate prep?

Biden is taking the debate seriously, a person with knowledge of the president’s plans told the Associated Press. Biden’s debate prep could last “the better part of a week at Camp David” for just the first debate alone, the person said.

So OK, we can assume the usual rehearsal of talking points and moot court practice with Trump stand-ins. Beyond that, according to NBC,

Inside the campaign, aides believe Biden walks on the stage with the upper hand. Mostly, his mandate will be to let “Trump be Trump,” which they believe will reveal extreme leanings and a less stable Trump than four years ago. Biden is likely to cast Trump as obsessed with revenge and retribution and hark to the political violence in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, a campaign official said.

In other words, the strategy will be for Joe to come off as a reasonable centrist, with Trump as a raving nut, which was also the 2020 plan.

Angelo Carusone, president of the left-leaning journalism watchdog group Media Matters for America, said most people get their impressions from snippets of news or shortened videos on social media, which depict Biden as a doddering old man, walking slowly or stumbling over his words.

“I don’t think that he’s going to come off as diminished and meek. My sense is that people will see that comparison and they’ll hear somebody making coherent arguments and Trump saying some really random stuff,” he said.

Frankly, I have a sense of overconfidence, which likely comes from Dr Jill, and which seems to have driven Hunter's failed defense strategy -- there's no Plan B, because Plan A just can't help but work. But the NBC account has a worrisome component:

Biden, now on back-to-back European trips, is to return to the U.S. only to head to Los Angeles for fundraisers. Once Biden is back at the White House, a source with knowledge of his debate prep said, he is expected to have a 10-day window to hunker down and engage in extensive preparatory sessions. They could include more intensive sessions at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland.

But Jill has had Joe on a non-stop schedule in the weeks prior to his return to the US -- just since his return from France this past Sunday, where his performance was at best woozy, she had him on display at the early Juneteenth celebration Monday, where he appeared frozen and out of it; he had to deal with Hunter's conviction the same day; on Tuesday he gave a speech in his usual stumbling style and then went to Wilmington, presumably to meet with Hunter.

Then all day Wednesday he's flying to Italy; by early morning today Italy time, he's doing G7 stuff, but that's noon US time, so he's tired and jet lagged. Right now, he isn't doing well:

Biden is in Italy for the G7 Summit. Other world leaders have to babysit him. They all surround him and guide him off the stage. He shuffles, looks confused, points, looks awkward trying to chat normally with his peers. pic.twitter.com/nlAJmMbnOz

— Linda S (@LinSapCT) June 13, 2024

By Saturday, he's flying not just back to Washington, but to Los Angeles for a Hollywood fundraiser, another full day equivalent in the air back and forth across the US after a flight across the Atlantic. Then he can maybe start to unwind and prep for the debate the following week, Thursday, June 27.

This might be doable for a robust man in early middle age. Trump might even be able to bring something like that off. For someone 81 years old whose overall health is looking more and more shaky, I'm not sure if putting him into a make-or-break debate with maybe a week to rebuild his strength is prudent or realistic.

I've heard rumors that the Royals kept Queen Elizabeth II going with blood transfusions -- maybe King Charles did so well in France for the same reason. But they're just heads of state, they aren't on a presidential schedule. I can visualize Joe hooked up to tubes with fresh blood and other meds being pumped in to jack him into shape, but really, that's something out of a science fiction flick. I don't think you can bring that off in the real world.

It sounds like Dr Jill and her yes-people are assuming that no matter how badly Joe comes off, Trump's mask will fall, he'll magically show he's actually a raving nut, and everyone's gonna change their minds. Justlikethat. And no Delaware jury will convict a Biden.