Did you spend Canada Day fretting about American democracy?
That presidential debate on Thursday was more of a dumpster fire in the caboose of a freight train that derailed over a cliff. At one point, my wife wandered into the living room as Joe Biden was rambling.
She paused for two seconds and then said, “Oh, no.”
Television is an unforgiving medium. It was particularly cruel to the president. The split screen, with a constant tight shot of Biden, captured the face of a man who looked like a deer in the headlights — and who wondered if the headlights were the eyes of a dragon flying around the rafters.
Biden looked like a child lost in the mall in a city that did not speak his language.
How bad was that performance? The conspiracies have already rumbled to life. His brain didn’t glitch. He was targeted by a sinister cabal. Per a Gizmodo story on Monday: “Conspiracy Theorists Think Biden Was Hit With Directed-Energy Weapons During Debate.”
Videos of Biden the day before and after the debate were analyzed. The conspiracists claim the footage reveals a marked difference in gait and resting face. Plus, a Russian embassy plane touched down during this three-day period. Plus, the plane was reportedly parked next to Donald Trump’s 757. Coincidence?
Or did a Russian agent slip a microwave bazooka across the tarmac? Did Lara Trump smuggle the gun into the CNN studios under her sundress and shoot Biden in the face just before his opening remarks? Biden’s thoughts were so disjointed, I feared he might turn a question on immigration into a meandering manifesto on mayonnaise.
But wondering if Biden had Havana Syndrome amounts to Stockholm Syndrome.
Politics is all about momentum. The Big Mo is in Trumpville. The Supreme Court ruling on Monday granting partial immunity to all presidents muddies “nobody is above the law.”
Gosh, if a president can now do anything vis-à-vis official acts, Biden should order SEAL Team Six to kidnap Trump this week and take him to Gitmo on Independence Day.
Or Joe Biden should drop out of this race give his party the Big Mo.
He wasn’t hit with an invisible beam on Thursday — he shot himself in the foot.
It is a wound that will not heal with independent voters in swing states.
Trump did not “win” the debate, not unless you score points for lying. Biden lost the debate because he could not smack down those lies. If a debate is like baseball, Trump kept lobbing softballs that Biden should have cranked into moon shots. Instead, he drooled on his bat. It was painful to watch.
It’s time to go when the calls come from inside the house. That would be the White House, where staffers went off the record with reporters this weekend to confess they were “shocked.”
Cue the panic. Start greasing the slippery slope to hell.
When Biden ran in 2020, he vowed to be a “transitional” leader. He was a “bridge.” He would not run again. He was going to beat Trump to save America.
Then he’d hand off the baton after battening down the hatches.
Now is the time to embrace that original game plan.
The Democrats have splintered into internecine camps. One side, led by Biden’s inner circle, are defiant about staying in the race. They say it’s terribly unfair to reduce 50 years of public service to a brutal 90 minutes. They cite Biden’s many policy accomplishments. Fair enough.
But if he loses in November, that legacy gets wiped out.
Biden says Trump is an existential threat to democracy. But refusing to step aside at this inflection point is also an existential threat to democracy.
You can’t put out a fire with gasoline.
Here’s something telling: Trump has not really mocked Biden’s debate performance. That’s because Agent Orange knows that if he were up against a Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro or even Bugs Bunny, he would get slaughtered on election day.
Four years ago, Biden was the only one who could beat Trump.
After the debate, he seems like the only one who can lose.
If you are polling behind a convicted felon, malignant narcissist, lazy bum, braggart, incurious lout and all-around bad human in July, that is God rapping his knuckles on your skull and whispering, “Joe, you did good. Now go.”
Biden has a code-red choice: prove he cherishes democracy by bowing out. Or allow stubborn pride to ignore the data and gamble on democracy. That’s a dangerous bet for the free world. If you care about global stability, you don’t hand the White House keys back to a guy who does not have the lateral intelligence and temperament to run a 7-Eleven.
Joe Biden has devoted his life to public service. Leaving now could be his greatest act yet. The debate wasn’t a blip — it was an unsalvageable flop.
And carrying on is a directed-energy weapon aimed at voters.
