Slate: Team Biden’s Contempt for Democracy

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It’s not often that I recommend a column from Slate but this one is worth a read. It’s titled “The Democratic Party’s Double Standard” and it’s focused on the way in which Democrats, who’ve spent years demanding that Republicans renounce President Trump, suddenly find themselves in a similar position. Shockingly, most of them aren’t meeting their own high standards. The piece opens with a story about the end of Woodrow Wilson’s 2nd term.

…historians now generally believe that the president had suffered a series of strokes that would continue to visit him over the months to come, eventually leaving him thoroughly incapacitated. Wilson’s wife Edith and his closest advisers desperately concealed his impairment from the public for the remainder of his presidency, though a delusional Wilson still wanted to run for a third term in 1920…

Wilson’s handlers committed a crime against democracy by hiding his decline, but what President Joe Biden and the leaders of today’s Democratic Party are doing is worse. Wilson’s mental collapse was confusing to the medical professionals of the day and unprecedented in American politics. Biden’s cognitive decline, by contrast, has been slow and predictable, while the consequences of his failure as either candidate or president could not be clearer…

For eight years, Democrats have demanded that Republicans stand up to a leader who is patently unfit for the presidency, calling on the press to denounce Trump’s lies and detail his derangement. After Thursday night’s debate, it is clear that many of those same Democrats are incapable of applying that very standard to themselves.

Since it became clear that Trump would be the likely nominee, Democrats have framed this election as one that is much more than a choice between two candidates. They presented it as a choice between preserving democracy or abandoning it. They encouraged Republicans to put country over party.

Democrats as defenders of democracy has a nice PR-friendly ring to it but as the author points out, their actions hiding Biden’s true condition evince something closer to contempt for democracy.

Biden faced an uphill reelection battle before the debate; almost any candidate would be stronger in its aftermath. Even if he somehow squeaks out a victory in November—what then? Biden’s mental state will invite aggression from bad actors and generate confusion at the highest levels of American government. Do the president’s words have the force of law after 4 p.m.? Who can be trusted to make what decisions when? Asking the public to vote for a man who cannot, in fact, serve as its leader requires real contempt for democracy.

Politico reported earlier today that Biden’s family and top advisors have been carefully stage managing around his limitations for years. Even if you want to argue that was somewhat defensible in the past when Biden’s limitations were less striking then they are now, it’s truly impossible for anyone to believe he has another four years in him. Even Jill Biden can’t honestly think that’s realistic. And yet, the Biden campaign keeps rolling along as if it makes sense.

Consider a counter-factual. What if Biden had somehow managed to get through that debate without falling apart in the way he did. Would we be hearing any of these revelations that are currently in the press about his diminished abilities? I think we all suspect the answer is no.

We’re only having this conversation because the effort to sell the country on a big lie collapsed on live television. And even now, the people who knew the truth are pushing Biden to keep going. Elected Democrats are holding their fire, still uncertain what to do next. Will they collectively decide to push for a leader who cannot serve? That’s up in the air today. So far, we’re not seeing a lot of brave Democrats condemning the sheer cynicism of the Biden campaign’s big lie.

The idea that Democrats don’t actually believe a lot of the things they say won’t come as a shock to many of our readers. Still, it’s nice to see even an outlet like Slate is occasionally able to see it.