“Father Time is undefeated.”
It’s an indisputable statement, and yet Democrats continue to dispute it. And as America saw in the presidential debate Thursday night, Democrats do so at their own peril.
For weeks, White House spokesflaks and their allies in the press have been pushing voters to reject the evidence of their own eyes, and believe that President Joe Biden is youthful and vigorous and not at all impaired by his age.
The problem is that Biden really is, well … old.
It’s a biological fact, one that Biden critics have been pointing out for three years.
Ah, but what is biology to Democrats? A dude with bulging biceps and a full beard declares himself a female- viola! Hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution are tossed overboard so the biological male can play basketball against high school girls?
A human being in the third trimester of fetal development is somehow not human, or even a being, Democrats argue. Biologically speaking, of course, it’s both. Do Democrats care?
And so shuffling Joe Biden is sharp as a tack, no matter how much he shakes on his way to the lectern. When Trump responded Thursday night to one of Biden’s rambling, inchoate answers by saying, “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either,” he spoke for millions of confused viewers.
CNN’s Chris Wallace called Biden’s debate performance “a car accident in slow motion.”
MSNBC’s Joy Reid added that, “The universal reaction [from Democrats] was somewhere approaching panic.”
Even hardcore Democrat and former Obama staffer Ben Rhodes was forced to admit the obvious Thursday night, and he urged his fellow Democrats to do the same: “Telling people they didn’t see what they saw is not the way to respond to this.”
But that’s exactly how Democrats, Biden included, have been responding to biological, economic, and political realities that conflict with their progressive ideology.
While Biden’s age and infirmity are getting the headlines, it was the substance of his debate answers where he had the true headscratchers.
Biden claimed unemployment was 15 percent when he was elected. It was less than half that. He insisted that Roe vs. Wade didn’t allow unrestricted late-term abortion, even though that’s exactly what New Hampshire had until Republicans passed a law limiting elective abortion to the first six months of pregnancy. And his claims regarding green energy replacing fossil fuels in the next two decades run counter to basic physics.
Under normal circumstances, Democrats can say anything they want and largely get away with it. Look at gubernatorial candidate Cinde Warmington’s plan to end the sale of gas-engine cars and shut down home heating oil by 2040. Scientists will tell you it’s nuts. Energy experts will tell you the infrastructure isn’t there. But the Granite State press has given her a pass on her kooky “magic electrons” approach to energy policy.
But Biden’s biological facts may be impossible to ignore, now that he’s appeared on the debate stage with Trump. The White House apparently thought the side-by-side comparison would be a boon to Biden because Trump is a man of such low character. But the image of the two men made Trump look strong and Biden look weak.
And it didn’t help when Biden devolved into angry barking about Trump “sleeping with porn stars” and his own alleged six handicap in golf.
That latter really got to Trump, an avid golfer.
“That’s probably the biggest lie he’s told yet — that he has a six handicap,” Trump quipped.
How does any of this help Biden? Answer: It doesn’t. Because he’s beyond help. Joe Biden is too old to do the job of president, he’s been too old for years, and polls show that Americans know it. That’s just a fact. And unless they’ve got a portrait of Biden in the attic that does his aging for him, it’s a fact that can’t be fixed.
Van Jones, a progressive activist and regular on CNN, offered some biological reality to Biden Thursday night after the debate.
“I love [Biden] as a good man. He loves his country. He’s doing the best that he can. But he had a test to meet tonight. To restore confidence, of the country, and of the base, and he failed to do that. And I think there’s a lot of people who are going to want to see him consider taking a different course now,” Jones said.
“We’re still far from our convention, and there is time for this party to figure out a different way forward, if he will allow us to do that. But tonight was not what we needed from Joe Biden.”
The facts aren’t always pleasant, but even Democrats are beginning to learn that they are still the facts.
