They Think We're Stupid

Democrats have to decided to handle Biden's debate fiasco by insulting our intelligence and treating us with contempt.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

I want you to close your eyes for a moment, much like Joe Biden is doing in the photo right above this paragraph. And then I want you to try and picture this scenario:

It’s January 20, 2029. 86-year-old Joe Biden has just completed his second and final term as president. He defied all of his critics and made it to the finish line with his ability to do the job—both physically and mentally—as intact as he kept telling us it would be. We did it Joe.

I can’t picture that scenario. I can picture lots of other scenarios—Biden somehow wins this November and then his decline accelerates and we’re tipped into a constitutional crisis and 25th Amendment territory, for instance, or he somehow wins and then (sorry) dies mid-way through his term—but I cannot see a universe in which Joe Biden retains the physical and cognitive capabilities necessary to be the president for another four-and-a-half years.

I’m willing to bet that most of you can’t either. And the reason for that is simple: we have eyes.

Biden’s horrific debate last week didn’t come out of thin air. We’ve been watching his very obvious physical and mental deterioration since before he became president. It’s not some fantasy that people are concocting out of thin air. I mean, look at these clips from the 2020 debate—less than four years ago—and tell me there’s been no change.

It’s just indisputable. The 2024 debate didn’t really give us new information. It merely stripped away the last shreds of plausible deniability about Biden’s situation. And the public’s verdict was decisive. 72 percent of registered voters told CBS News that they didn’t think Biden has the “mental and cognitive health to serve as president.” That’s not “to serve as president in a second term,” that’s just “serve as president,” full stop. The same number said that they don’t think Biden should be running for president at all. That includes nearly half of all Democrats.

A decent party would show some humility, or even contrition, in this situation. But not the Democratic Party. Instead, Democrats, from the White House on down, are acting with a level of denialism, mendacity, and arrogance that is off the scales. And, in asking the public to accept a string of the most ludicrous excuses for Biden’s performance, they are making it clear that they see voters as a bunch of gullible fools who need to shut up and learn their place. They are treating us with total contempt.

There are an array of talking points that Democrats have turned to to cover for Biden in the last few days. Each of these excuses are, in their own ways, bullshit. They are all trying to make us believe something that we know is not true.