Just like that, #BidensCognitiveDecline was trending on Twitter, and it became a disaster, with Biden defenders in hysterics, blaming it all on the work of Russian bots and/or President
I figure that many
"I just wonder," Scarborough asked after a particularly disastrous Biden debate performance months ago. "Are we afraid to say that a lot of his sentences don't make sense, that he's having trouble completing his thoughts?"
If
That autoworker didn't want Biden, if elected president, to take his guns away. Biden said he wouldn't take anyone's "AR-14" (there is no such weapon), but Joe must have forgotten he'd recently embraced
"Hell, yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47," said O'Rourke.
That kind of talk is music to the ears of the anti-Second Amendment left and to much of the media, which leans left. But it's trouble with working-class union voters in key electoral-rich states like
As Joe lost it with the autoworker, you could see a Biden campaign aide panicking behind him, but by then it was too late and #BidensCognitiveDecline was a thing. If only she had a blanket or a bushel basket to put over his head. But she didn't.
The
Given Biden's victories in
But never fear, my liberal friends, if you're looking for talking points to defend Biden, they were set forth in the left-leaning
Naturally, it's all Trump's fault.
"Trump and
The subhead was pure pro-Joe: "The president settles on a schoolyard strategy to take out his likely general election opponent."
It is true that Trump has pushed the theme of Biden's mental fitness relentlessly. But it is also true that
Trump finds a weakness and picks at it. In this he's no different from
Yet now, predictably,
Is that a fact? Or is it the truth? "We choose truth over facts," Biden said in
But what is the truth?
The truth is that Trump isn't the first to pick at the Biden weakness. Democratic candidates and pundits could see Biden slipping. Booker,
Not everyone agrees with me.
For balance I called on
He's run tough campaigns. And he thinks there was a time when Biden's gaffes mattered, when swing voters mattered. But he doesn't think swing voters matter as much as they once did. It's all about tribes now.
"Voters' passionate support for Biden or Trump won't be the reason one of them wins," Golden said. "Negative partisanship and the turnout it drives on each side will decide this election. If
I respect the analysis, but I think swing voters still matter. And that they care about the mental state of their president.
I'm not mocking Biden. Those of us who have parents of his age and older know what we're looking at. It happens slowly. But it happens. Not to everyone. It doesn't happen to the lucky ones. But it happens.
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John Kass is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune who also hosts a radio show on WLS-AM.