Joe Biden suffered an eyeball malfunction during CNN’s recent seven-hour prime time slog on the subject of climate change. His eye became deeply bloodshot, and although such events — the bloody eye, not the TV marathon — are fairly common, it was a further blow to his campaign. Biden’s toothy, grinning image is showing telltale signs of decline and suffering from a growing suspicion that the guy is too antediluvian to run for the Oval Office.
I’ve written on this subject before, and it’s doubtless rather impolite to do so, but dropping it would be a dereliction. Biden is 76 years old and would be 78 on Inauguration Day 2021. He has memory lapses, such as when he recently couldn’t recall if he was in New Hampshire or Vermont, and he is keeping his campaign schedule suspiciously light. Even his tendency to jog jauntily across the campaign stage when introduced to speak (presumably to create an impression of youthful energy) actually reveals rather than conceals a creeping decrepitude.
Can this be who the Democrats will choose for the top of their ticket? Will they make the same mistake as in 2016 when they thought they were nominating Mrs. Inevitable? Maybe. But they have reason to be worried. Cozy Joe is a reassuring figure, and he keeps topping public opinion polls as the candidate best able to defeat President Trump. Neither the party nor its media supporters want to inflict damage on the man who may be their standard bearer less than a year from now.
But there is a danger in not airing this problem. If Biden escapes critical scrutiny, secures the nomination, then dwindles as the months tick past, his kid-gloved treatment during the primaries might end up having done nothing but elevate a nominee whom voters decide isn’t up to the task.
How have things come to this? One reason is that an even more ancient candidate is in the race and his popularity is holding firm. Bernie Sanders, who looks more vigorous than Biden but is a year older, is splitting the party’s base with Elizabeth Warren, who is positively effervescent with energy and ideas. This cleavage of the extreme Left, with neither radical candidate able to break ahead, is allowing bloody-eye Biden to run through the middle. He might end up being the winner because a party that actually wants someone more left-wing, and which would benefit from a nominee less tottery, can’t make up its mind between the two alternatives.
If neither Sanders nor Warren overhaul Biden, it might spare America some of the policy horrors of socialism. Nathan Pinkoski explains why American socialism is actually far more dangerous and virulent than the old European socialism. Our cover story, “Monica’s Moment,” explains how Monica Lewinsky, the first victim of the internet shaming culture, outlasted the Clintons and got the last laugh. And Andrew Pollack, whose daughter was killed in the 2018 Parkland high school mass murder, makes plain how reforms helped insulate and incubate the killer who shattered so many families.
