Democrats Freak Out

The problem with Joseph Biden tonight was not that Donald Trump beat him.

Donald Trump was unchanged and no better or worse than he ever is.

The problem was that Joseph Biden looked like he was in advanced stages of Parkinson's Disease: stiff, mask like face which could not manage any real expression beyond an open mouth grimace. 

Four years ago I attended an event for Biden at a local venue with a long time Democratic activist who had met Biden before, several times, as Democrats in New Hampshire often do--they see the candidates close up around these parts. We listened to Biden ramble on, trying to answer questions which he forgot by the time he got half way through his sentence and wound up wandering off into answering some other question he thought he might have been talking about by the time he got to the end of the sentence.

"Oh, this is not the same man," my friend said. He looked stiff and walked haltingly. She remembered meeting him 4 years earlier and he had told her she had gorgeous blue eyes. He was right about her eyes, but that day, 4 years later he would not be able to even make eye contact.

He left New Hampshire in 2020 before the voting even began and he came in 5th in the New Hampshire primary.

But he won the primaries on Super Tuesday the following week, which just showed that the New Hampshire primary is a relic and irrelevant, and in fact, Biden got his revenge by making South Carolina the first primary this election cycle.

Biden turned out to be a much better President than I could ever have imagined: He managed COVID and the economy and the war in Ukraine and his instincts on most issues have always been spot on from abortion to gay marriage to the need for alliances with Europe.

But a political party and a nation needs a champion, a hero to lead them into battle,  and watching Biden, mask like face, voice choking, an old gomer voice, trying to use statistics and numbers and getting all mixed up, you knew Biden cannot be that champion.

"Compared to tonight," my friend  said, "That time 4 years ago looked like the Gettysburg Address."

And four years ago we thought Biden looked like he was ready for the nursing home. At the time, she tried to convince himself, he was just an old man at the end of a long day of events, but tonight the visuals were just dreadful--worse than we had feared.

We can only imagine what those tapes Merrick Garland is so zealously protecting looked like.

Somebody has to talk to Biden. Get him to step down, the way Lyndon Johnson did in 1968. 

But who among the Democrats can beat Trump? Who can unite a party which is not particularly fractured, but which has developed no real stars of national fame?

Donald Trump is a candidate who runs on charisma--on his personal magnetism, which repels 60% of voters--but 40% is all you need to get elected if they can swing the right states.

Who then can save the Democratic Party and the country?

Whoever it may be, it is not Joe Biden, who has served us well, but has simply served too long.