President Joe Biden speaks at a campaign rally at Sherman Middle School in Madison, Wis., Friday, July 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
What the eyes have seen cannot be unseen.
Fifty-one million Americans watched it live and countless millions have seen snippets of the June 27 presidential debate. Images of Joe Biden as a tottering old man unable to articulate a coherent vision, much less mix it up with Donald Trump, are indelibly etched in their brain.
Seeing Joe Biden doddle onto the stage and fumble from the first question should give no American joy. Joe Biden has a distinguished legacy, with more than a half-century of public service. It’s sad that his family, the Administration and his campaign staff didn’t intervene in what is now a critical problem.
In today’s polarized political environment, where an “Orange Man Bad” philosophy trumps rational decision-making, the outright hatred of Donald Trump allowed Democrats and the mainstream media to look past or ignore a deeply flawed candidate with the hope that the American voter would focus their attention on Trump’s antics and not Joe Biden.
This paradigm is no longer possible.
For months, the White House and its elite media friends have pushed back on claims that the president was unfit for re-election.
When Special Counsel Robert Hur released a statement that Joe Biden wouldn’t be prosecuted for having classified documents and said that the president was “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” he was raked over the coals by the Biden-friendly commentators and Congressional Democrats. It now looks like Hur was prescient. The White House still refuses to release the video of the interview.
Joe tried to right the ship by appearing in a taped interview with former Clinton message guru and now ABC News host George Stephanopoulos. The interview wasn’t live. Joe fumbled and stumbled during their 22-minute exchange. Not the “boost” the president and his campaign needed.
In the week leading up to the debate, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre accused Republicans and conservative media of “deep fakes” and “fake news” when highlighting the president’s obvious age-related challenges. Post-debate, she refuses to retract these concerns.
Now, the Biden Administration spin doctor spends her days battling a re-awakened elite media and trying to explain why a Parkinson’s doctor visited the White House multiple times.
Two weeks after the worst performance by any presidential candidate in a presidential debate, the White House is consumed with Joe Biden and his ability, or lack thereof, to run a 50-state campaign for president, much less function as America’s CEO and commander in chief for the next four years. The Democrat Party is in disarray. And Donald Trump remains largely silent.
Whether to keep or ditch Biden rests solely with Joe Biden. He legitimately won 3,896 delegates, double the number needed to win his party’s nomination. The party cleared the field of any viable candidate. This decision by the “establishment” doesn’t look too wise at this point.
The scramble among Democrat members of Congress and Party insiders remains as clear as mud: keep Joe or dump him for a younger, more viable candidate. Both options are fraught with peril.
Regardless of how the above plays out, the elite media is finally doing its job. They’re investigating Joe and asking the tough questions.
The media digging and investigating will hopefully discover what the Biden family, Kamala Harris and others close to the president knew about his condition and when they knew it?
Was this a cover-up of epic proportions all because Democrats fear Donald Trump? Or are Joe Biden and his inner circle so desperate to maintain power that they’re willing to hide his obvious physical and mental decline to the country’s detriment?
Either way, it’s a bad look for Joe Biden, his legacy and Democrats.
The American voters deserve answers.
Matthew Klink is owner and president of Klink Campaigns, Inc. He is the immediate past president of the International Association of Political Consultants and has worked on political campaigns across the United States and in more than 35 countries.