We support our Publishers and Content Creators. You can view this story on their website by CLICKING HERE.

My law firm was one of those that defended tobacco companies against, among other things, lawsuits brought by state attorneys general. A key claim in those cases was that the tobacco companies conspired to prevent the public from learning that smoking is bad for you. “If so,” said the partner in my firm who was in charge of the case for our client, “it was the least successful conspiracy in the history of the world.”

I recall that comment in the context of recent “revelations” about the conspiracy on the part of the White House, the Democratic Party and the press to conceal the fact that Joe Biden is senile. This Wall Street Journal article, for example, has been described as a “blockbuster” story. In my opinion, it contained little that was new and nothing that was surprising.

I don’t doubt that various people, including the press, conspired, but the fact that Joe Biden was senile was open and obvious. It was obvious even before he became president. He ran a basement campaign in 2020, while Donald Trump, who is nearly as old as Biden, toured the country putting on one massive rally after another. I assume everyone understood the reason for that contrast: Biden wasn’t up to running anything like a normal presidential campaign.

Biden’s disability was obvious throughout his presidency. He couldn’t talk without a teleprompter. On the rare occasions when he wasn’t reading a script, he quickly veered into incoherence or worse. Even with a teleprompter, he couldn’t be trusted. He would read instructions like “Pause” and “Repeat line.” An intelligent fifth-grader would have done better.

Biden fell down (or up) steps. He wandered aimlessly. He was officially on vacation half the time. The fact that his aides protected him from public exposure was obvious. And it’s not as though no one was talking about his evident incapacity. Power Line was one of many, many news sources that repeatedly commented on Biden’s dementia. And videos documenting his pitiful state were ubiquitous.

Vast numbers of people, including every salient Democrat and every relevant reporter, knew that Biden was dysfunctional–knew that he was not up to the standard of a normal adult, let alone a normal president.

What is striking to me is not the conspiracy to cover up his condition, which was hardly more successful than the alleged conspiracy to cover up the fact that smoking is bad for you.

What is striking is how few people on the Left–approximately zero–cared about the fact that we didn’t have a functioning president. Why were Democrats so unconcerned about having a president who was basically a cardboard cutout? Because they don’t really think the president is very important. They were content to have the Executive Branch run by nameless White House aides and by party grandees like Barack Obama. They thought, understandably, that the real power in government lies in the administrative agencies, and that those agencies would carry on perfectly well without a sentient being in the White House.

“Joe Biden” was just a name on the ballot, served up because, as of 2020, he had wide name recognition but not a far-left image. A perfect combination! And one that did not require him to do anything at all, once in office. A vote for Biden was simply a vote for things as they were: a government trending always to the left, with trillions of dollars being dispensed by a benign bureaucracy–the real power in America, the fourth branch that is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution.

I think this narrative helps to explain why Democrats are so horrified at the prospect of a Trump presidency. Trump, a real, non-senile president? A president with a mandate from the voters to bring about important changes? A president who will re-assert control over the “fourth branch”? A president who won’t be a pawn in the hands of Washington insiders? A president who actually understands and carries out his duties under Article II? A president capable of standing up to the Washington establishment?

This is what passes for revolutionary change in our late-stage republic.