Here's the thing I can't get over.
If those running our country had instructed Joe Biden to duck any debates with Donald Trump, an option that would have been utterly defended by both his base and the mainstream press (but I repeat myself) as justifiable - "debating a convicted felon only gives him a legitimacy he hasn't earned" - then Biden would still be the nominee of the Democrat Party heading into November's election.
The Washington Post's Paul Farhi asks the question as though he doesn't know the answer:
Of course he would. And that underscores the real issue that should be alarming to most Americans. Watch as the public furor over all this splinters into discussions about who will replace Biden on the ticket, how they will be selected to do so, why the guy who can't run a campaign can run a country. None of that is nearly as significant as what "we the people" should be focusing on like a laser.
Without that eye-popping debate disaster, the same man, with the same obvious dementia, cognitive decline, Parkinson's, or rapidly deteriorating mental function, would still be regularly trotted out by staff, led off the stage by friends, reading instruction lines off of cue cards, and saying brutally incoherent things, and this is what we would be hearing:
That is the real crisis.
Of course I agree that there are legitimate questions to be raised over the fact that the president is resigning the campaign but not the office. But the truth is that Joe Biden hasn't been running that office for years, if not throughout his entire presidency. In that regard, nothing will change.
But what must be discussed, what must be debated, what must be demanded is an explanation of how fundamentally anti-democratic our civilization has become when a powerful cabal of political and media elites successfully hide the fact that the elected president of the United States was not actually functioning in his role.
What is being revealed here is precisely what the sometimes overdramatic Vivek Ramaswamy observed following Biden's announcement:
This isn't partisan. In fact, no one should be more livid about all this than the Democrat Party's electorate - that is, the average citizens who finance and support Democrat Party politicians. The majority of them saw their choice for president in 2016, Bernie Sanders, robbed of the nomination by the "system." They are now seeing their choice for president in 2024, Joe Biden, being pushed out of the nomination he won by that "system."
Shadowy oligarchs running an undemocratic regime all while propagandizing the republic about "threats to our democracy."
It's positively Orwellian.
The most alarming aspect is just how deep the deception extends. Surely there were some in that media montage who were truly in the dark about Biden's mental handicaps. But there were many who weren't. There were many who only pretended to be shocked when they could no longer keep up the charade.
Consider those closest to the president himself. Perhaps close aides and family members were quiet because they were drunk with the power. But this was Vice President Harris just last November:
She knew. She couldn't have not known. But she either chose to participate in the cover-up or she was forced to by the unnamed powers that have been governing our country for four years while her and Joe act as figureheads.
No person on the side of democratic government can accept any of this. Not for ideological reasons, not for partisan reasons, not even because they despise Donald Trump. This is the definition of scandal, and it has layers that run far deeper than most of us cynics even thought possible.
Wise Americans won't be distracted by the coming horse race of replacing Biden.
