It’s painful to say this, but we have all seen the proof, the aging, the public appearances and interviews, the obvious inability to take the fight for democracy to Donald J. Trump.
Regrettably, George Clooney is not the man he was.
He is not the man who was impressed with “Big F’ing Deal” Biden in 2010. He hasn’t even been behaving much like the George Clooney of 2020. Some suspect former President Barak Obama behind the scenes influencing Clooney’s call for Biden to go, and that of other Democrats — not a great portent, since Obama’s first failure to support a Biden run, favoring Hillary Clinton instead in 2016, resulted in a win for Trump.
In fact, Clooney and other Democratic supporters publicly calling for Biden to step aside have demonstrated an alarming failure of judgment and inability to grasp reality as they fall over themselves to gift-wrap the 2024 election for the guy who has publicly declared he would be a dictator on the first day of his presidency.
They want to upend the primary process that has already named Biden the nominee, a little more than 100 days before the election. Between now and then, they hope to overcome the certain bad blood they’ll engender among voters who have already named their candidate. They hope to surmount an enormous lead they will gift their opponent in campaigning time.
The pièce de résistance of this mass conspiracy of failure is the paragon of political virtue they have named to pull it off: CUE CRICKETS CHIRPING.
The pièce de résistance of this mass conspiracy of failure is the paragon of political virtue they have named to pull it off: CUE CRICKETS CHIRPING.
They cannot even settle on the most obvious choice, Vice President Kamala Harris, because, although she’s on the ticket with Biden, and a good deal younger, she’s not polling better. Any other likely choice would have even less name recognition and their own challenges, which the GOP and the media will surely point out.
You’re either part of the solution or part of the problem, and if the Democrats calling for Biden to step aside are to be taken at their word, they’re not just part of the problem, but the biggest part of the problem. They perceive themselves to be in a hole, and they continue to dig.
But they’re not in a hole. The situation they are panicking over is a piece of bait packaged for them neatly by the GOP and waved in their faces since Biden’s first run, that Biden is too old. His stutters and verbal gaffes, a Biden quirk his entire life, are evidence he’s not fit, they say.
Biden IS an old guy who had a cold and a disastrously timed bad day June 27, but there is no universe where a physically slowed, still mentally alert Biden is not any sane person’s choice against an aspiring dictator. EVEN a Biden who mixes his up his sentences in what another context would be a comical reference is an obvious better choice.
Except, that is, within the universe some Democrats appear desperate to create.
Very few Democrat voters will vote for Trump under any circumstances. Very few conservative voters who have decided Trump is a danger to democracy are likely saying to themselves, “Shucks, he seemed so old in that debate. Guess we gotta have a dictatorship now.”
And most of the Democrat voters and conservative voters who put Biden in the Oval Office are not going to be swayed by a bad few weeks for Biden. In fact, polling immediately following the debate showed no change in Biden’s numbers, and has held steady despite an apparent campaign to push Biden off the ticket,
according to Fivethirtyeight.com and NPR, respectively.
Buying in to the GOP Narrative: Hook, Line, Sinker
CNN’s Van Jones, presumably on the network’s analysis panel debate night as a liberal voice, did viewers a disservice, reacting emotionally to Biden’s debate showing. At no time in the aftermath did he ask the crucial question: Why? And the only honest answer to that, from Van Jones, or anybody on that panel, would have been: We don’t know why he was acting like that.
Administration officials have attributed Biden’s poor performance on a cold and jet lag, understandable for an old guy, or any guy for that matter. During his press conferences this week, Biden continued to cough, signaling he’s not quite over the illness. A column in Newsweek suggests cold medications could be affecting the President. In fact, the doctors said it’s the most likely explanation.
“It would be tragic to magnify the meaning of an ill-timed adverse drug effect—and potentially have it change the course of history,” write Harlan Krumholz of the Yale School of Medicine and Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, President of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute.
But Jones swallowed conservative talking points about Biden being addled. Journalists aren’t supposed to do that. He helped spread confusion and very effectively carried Republican talking points for the Trump campaign.
CNN and other big networks benefit from cataclysmic stakes and a dramatic fight between political foes in the months before the election. They do not benefit from telling the truth: Biden will win the election, because voters have already demonstrated they don’t want a dictator. Voters have demonstrated they won’t fall for Trump’s lies, disastrous leadership, and his own unique challenges mixing up details and names. They have already made this choice.
The debate didn’t change that. Two weeks of Democrats shooting themselves in the foot hasn’t changed that.
So, likely voter, some influential Democrats feel compelled to ask for your final answer – are you smarter than a dictator?
Author: Warwick Post Staff
This is a test
