The thunderous, blind rage with which Democrats and their media stooges are greeting the special counsel report on Joe Biden is a thing to behold.
With apologies to Jack Nicholson and “A Few Good Men,” they can’t handle the truth.
It’s as if Dems and their handmaidens really believed Biden was fit for duty, that the stumbling, mumbling, confusion and hiding were normal.
And now they are wild with fury because they’ve been embarrassed by the revelation of explosive facts they should have known.
That’s a possible explanation, but not the likely one.
A more reasonable view is that their fury stems from the fact that they, too, were part of a great con job, and their dirty little secret has been exposed by the devastating portrait of the president in special counsel Robert Hur’s report.
It doesn’t take a press critic to realize most of the White House press corps spent three years covering up for Biden instead of covering him.
On the few occasions when they allowed themselves to see his decrepitude, they quickly pivoted to defending him against those mean Republicans.
As a group, they are the least curious journalists ever, failing even to ask about the president’s obvious decline.
Instead, they did their Democratic duty by pretending that Old Joe was a good guy doing his best in a troubled world that would be much worse if the fiendish Donald Trump got back in power.
These are the same people who continue to overlook the president’s involvement in son Hunter Biden’s crooked business deals, preferring to paint a picture of him as a doting dad to his troubled boy.
With part of the curtain pulled back — by Biden’s own Department of Justice, no less — the party and media must deal with a changing political landscape.
The campaign will be polling furiously to see how much damage the president suffered from the finding that he escaped charges on illegally keeping classified documents largely because his memory was so poor that he would be a sympathetic defendant.
Although Hur wrote that he “uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials,” he said he was not recommending criminal charges in part because he believes no jury would convict an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
Talk about killing with kindness!
Biden’s team tried to celebrate the fact that there would be no charges to draw a contrast with the pending federal case against Trump for similar offenses.
But the celebration was quickly overwhelmed by the reaction to Hur’s repeated citing of the president’s diminished cognitive functions.
Joe’s foggy memory
Citing two interviews, the special counsel wrote that Biden “did not remember when he was vice president” and “did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him.”
Hur’s findings sent the White House into panic mode.
It quickly set up an unusual evening press conference by the president, where he threw more fuel on the fire by appearing short-tempered and calling Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi “the president of Mexico.”
Days earlier, Biden claimed to have had separate conversations with past leaders of France and Germany in 2021, which was years after both men died.
So his brain fog is a real, enduring reality and my guess is that, as more and more of the public learns about Hur’s findings, polls will increasingly make Biden look unelectable.
After all, Trump is already leading in most national polls and swing states, with Biden’s approval on the border and other issues at historic lows.
While it’s reasonable to wonder how much lower Biden can go, the crucial question is whether he can recover.
The biggest hurdle will be that Hur confirms what most Americans either knew or suspected —that Biden is not capable of serving nearly five more years.
President Kamala?
Indeed, the fallout even included an avalanche of chatter in Washington and on social media about invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him.
The amendment lays out a mechanism for the vice president to take over when the commander in chief “is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
Although no sensible American wants Kamala Harris to occupy the Oval Office, the chatter recalls how often Dems demanded that process be used to remove Trump during his presidency.
For it now to be discussed about Biden is a remarkable turnabout.
Assuming that doesn’t happen, there is still the matter of how Biden’s campaign changes to meet the new reality.
The most radical scenario mentioned is that he will step aside and hand the nomination to Michelle Obama.
As wild as that sounds, it probably makes more sense than the way forward described by one anonymous official.
“The matter is closed,” a campaign aide told The Wall Street Journal.
“He’s going to keep doing what he’s doing. There’s not going to be some major strategy shift here.”
If that’s true, it’s a case of denial.
Or surrender.
Absent any upheavals, the likely course is that Biden will shift to a nonstop negative campaign against Trump.
That has been a staple throughout his presidency, but he has also tried to mix in self-promotions about “Bidenomics” and big-ticket climate programs he got through Congress.
Those positive pitches will get less and less time on the stump as the campaign heats up and his handlers tell him the only way he can lift himself up is to bring Trump down.
That won’t be easy, but it’s all Biden has.
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Meanwhile, Trump is also getting a boost from other unlikely sources.
The Supreme Court is almost certain to overturn a Colorado court ruling that Democrats can block Trump from appearing on state election ballots.
The only debate after Thursday’s oral arguments is whether the vote against the ban will be unanimous or 8-1.
Either would be a dagger into the heart of a concerted effort by Dems across the nation to use the courts to rig the election.
The plot to give Biden a second term by having state officials disqualify his leading opponent reeks of banana republic politics, yet efforts to do just that were pending in 12 states late last month, according to CBS News.
Shame on them.
These election preventers are more dangerous threats to democracy than election deniers.
Developments in the Georgia criminal case over the 2020 election also favor Trump.
Growing evidence about the allegedly corrupt practices of Fani Willis, the Fulton County prosecutor, are casting greater doubt on whether a trial will be held before the election, or ever.
To be sure, Dems have weaponized law enforcement to stack the deck against Trump in every way possible.
But even a few signs that the justice system is still capable of fair play give reason to hope that a violent national crackup is not inevitable.
Source link: https://nypost.com/2024/02/10/opinion/old-man-joe-bidens-only-chance-of-winning-now-is-just-bringing-trump-down/