Has the press been covering for Joe Biden over the past few months? Until now I've considered this to be little more than typical Fox News nonsense, but I'm beginning to wonder. Here is Olivia Nuzzi:
This April, at a reception before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, I joined a sea of people waiting for a photo with the president and First Lady in the basement of the Washington Hilton.... The first person I saw upon entering the subterranean space was the First Lady.... I smiled and said hello. She looked back at me with a confused, panicked expression. It was as if she had just received horrible news and was about to run out of the room and into some kind of a family emergency. “Uh, hi,” she said. Then she glanced over to her right. Oh …
I followed the First Lady’s gaze and found the president. Now I understood her panicked expression.... My heart stopped as I extended my hand to greet the president. I tried to make eye contact, but it was like his eyes, though open, were not on. His face had a waxy quality. He smiled. It was a sweet smile.... He spoke very slowly and in a very soft voice. “And what’s your name?” he asked.
Exiting the room after the photo, the group of reporters — not instigated by me, I should note — made guesses about how dead he appeared to be, percentage wise. “Forty percent?” one of them asked.
The whole story has much, much more. Nuzzi says she's been hearing questions about Biden's mental state since January, always sort of whispered and always anonymous:
They were scared and horrified. But they were also burdened. They needed to talk about it (though not on the record).... Their disclosures often followed innocent questions: Have you seen the president lately? How does he seem? Often, they would answer with only silence, their eyes widening cartoonishly, their heads shaking back and forth. Or with disapproving sounds. “Phhhhwwwaahhh.” “Uggghhhhhhhhh.” “Bbbwwhhheeuuw.” Or with a simple, “Not good! Not good!” Or with an accusatory question of their own: “Have you seen him?!”
....Longtime friends of the Biden family, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, were shocked to find that the president did not remember their names.... Saying hello to one Democratic megadonor and family friend at the White House recently, the president stared blankly and nodded his head. The First Lady intervened to whisper in her husband’s ear, telling him to say “hello” to the donor by name and to thank them for their recent generosity. The president repeated the words his wife had fed him. “It hasn’t been good for a long time but it’s gotten so, so much worse,” a witness to the exchange told me. “So much worse!”
As Nuzzi acknowledges, she's been skeptical of Biden's stamina for years, and is hardly a Biden family favorite. Still, there's no reason to believe she's making this up.
I've known older relatives who have shown some slippage over the years and it's genuinely hard to know if it's really gotten bad enough that something needs to be done. A misstep here or there might mean they're declining or it might just be a misstep here or there. How bad do they have to get before you have The Conversation? How often do the missteps have to occur? Anyone who's dealt with this—and that's a lot of us—knows this is hard.
But it sure sounds as though Biden's debate performance has finally given everyone permission to say what they've been thinking for the past half year or so: Yeah, it's bad. Someone needs to have The Conversation.
But no one has.
Thank you, KenSchulz!
I was hoping someone besides me noticed that.
The MSM hates Democratic Presidential candidates and Democratic Presidents. It has created and enabled frenzies around fake issues since, well, at least since Bill Clinton and Whitewater/Lewinsky.
THe MSM helped torpedo Al Gore - with, of course, important assistance from The Left. Censorship of music! Says he invented the Internet! He's boring and sighs a lot! (While Bush II was someone you'd like to have a beer with. Right.)
The MSM did its best to torpedo Barak Obama, dutifully carrying every tic or twitch the GOP came up with (remember Rev. Wright? Terrorist fist bumps? The tan suit, FFS?).
The MSM was absolutely instrumental in torpedoing Hillary Clinton's campaign - again, with eager assistance from The Left.
And now people think the MSM is only expressing understandable concern when they go on and on about Biden's age? When Biden has delivered real world, amazing policies that are having amazing, real world effects?
And if Biden did what the NYT demands - and some useful idiots hereabouts want as well - and dropped out in favor of Harris or even Newsom... do you think for one minute the MSM won't turn right around and say this is all very troubling, the Democratic Party is in chaos, how could they possibly govern the country when they barely know who it is they're nominating?
Because they will do exactly that.
Don't fall for it. Don't fall for this latest binge of Destroy the Democratic Candidate roulette.
i long for the search for obama's katrina.
this isn't media hype and i'm not falling for anything. i watched the debate. so unless you want to tell me to ignore my lying eyes (and ears)....
I would ask you to consider the impracticability of any alternative, both logistically and electorally.
i am fully considering it, recognize the risk and difficulty, and the fact i don't have enough information to make a fully informed judgement on the best course forward. but what i object to is all the people saying it's ridiculous to claim there's a legitimate issue with biden's cognitive abilities, both in terms of running a successful campaign and performing his duties as president.
Well, it's obvious that you can't be arsed to read the transcript of that debate, but the larger point is that no one is going to go out of their way to prove you're wrong, which is the fight you're looking for. No, you have to prove to us that you're right, and trust me, most of us think the live debate is not sufficient proof of your claim. But it's equally obvious that you're too lazy to go dig up more evidence to support your contention, hence the fight you want to start that I mentioned above.
i'm not looking for a fight, and i'm certainly not tryin to prove anything to you or anyone. you're the one who seems consistently angry, rude and generally an ass. i guess now is a good time to just stop ever responding to any of your rants.
Oh dear lord. “I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell.” Deducting points with specific comments as to why is not being 'angry or rude'. Noting that some people persist in making the same mistakes despite the corrections is not being an ass.
Let me demonstrate: You haven't provided any quotes from the transcript showing that Biden is having anything other than a bad night. You've also been down on Biden since well before these debates, and never once did you bring up this particular argument with cites to prove it. And pointing out that trying to shift the burden proof where you have to provide evidence that you're right to others who have to prove that you're wrong is not only contrary to the rules of logic and debate, it's also in egregious bad taste.
You can call my highlighting your failings 'angry and bitter' and that it makes me ass, but given that I've given you an option to turn in your revised paper for a regrade, I'll just put this down as someone who's angry and bitter about his grade and is rather making an ass of himself. You want other people to prove you're wrong; prove to me you're capable of performing -- and behaving -- better than you have beeen.
I'm not comforted by the expectation that the leopards would eat Sulzberger's face.
Want the left to not help “torpedo” candidates? Maybe find one that represents actual left ideas instead of centrist bullshit.
Oh wait I forgot the centrists are the only adults in the room. Fuck offfffff
clinton was to the left of carter. obama was to the left of clinton. biden is to the left of obama.
Yes, and most of the commentariat here are good with not letting the perfect be the enemy of better. Most.
I didn't watch the actual debate, only clips on social media and youtube. But I've changed my position on Biden running and it's based on just one fact - he can't CLEARLY articulate the danger of a second Trump presidency. Kamala can do a better job and we really need to in order to win. Step aside or resign, it doesn't matter
Now I'm starting to hope he so bombs his interview tonight that it leads to a chain reaction to where stepping down is inevitable.
Digby nails it:
Sorry if I'm coming across as angry and bitter and something of an ass ... or so some people at the NYT might say. Some commenters would even say it here. Ask me if I give a crap about what they have to say 😉
Nuzzi is an untrustworthy bullshit artist.
She might not be making stuff up out of thin air, but she is almost providing a slant.