As Andrew Cuomo ascends during coronavirus pandemic, Joe Biden fades

Does Joe Biden deserve what's happening to him during this coronavirus pandemic?

Not really. Deserve has nothing to do with presidential politics or the coronavirus. But somebody has something to do with what's happening to Biden:

Andrew Cuomo, Democratic governor of New York.

Cuomo has everything to do with it. Now many Democrats want him to be their presidential nominee, as Biden melts like an ice cube before our eyes.

Cuomo is on national television daily, giving his coronavirus briefings, presenting as a man of action and sympathy, fighting for his city and state that are being overwhelmed by the virus. He looks like a president.

And old Joe? Biden, the expected Democratic presidential nominee, remains lost, hapless, eclipsed and marginalized by events.

Biden has all but disappeared, like the time you were at the supermarket with your elderly uncle, and he wandered off, again. Frantic, you searched all the aisles until you finally found him asking the lady giving out samples for another taste of banana pudding.

"Pudding," the uncle says. "I love pudding."

Joe loves ice cream. But whether pudding or ice cream, many Democrats are wondering if old Joe is cold enough, hard enough, to handle a crisis. He fades from view as Cuomo has become the new flavor.

Biden's handlers, realizing he'd been eclipsed, trotted him out for gentle controlled media appearances, but these were failures.

CNN's Jake Tapper had to lecture him on how to cough into his elbow. In a speech about the coronavirus that he delivered from his Delaware home, you could see Biden gesturing in panic with his hand when the teleprompter glitched. Then he wandered off into some verbal wasteland.

Then they put Biden on with the liberal ladies of "The View." Foolish conservatives who dare enter that lair are often devoured, the flesh stripped from their bones as in ancient mythology. But on "The View," Democratic politicians are fed sugar cubes and petted like unicorns.

And even there, Biden stumbled. He was asked a softball question by host Sara Haines, regarding President Donald Trump saying the government should reassess the recommended period for businesses being shut down and Americans told to stay at home.

Haines asked, "Are you at all concerned, as Trump said, that we cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself?"

From his home in Delaware, Biden gave the camera a thousand-yard stare.

"We have to take care of the cure," Biden said. "That will make the problem worse, no matter what. No matter what."

Sure, Joe, sure. Want some pudding?

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A "draft Cuomo" movement is growing among Democrats, because Joe is no longer that cube of hard ice he once was. He's not the icy fellow debating Republican Paul Ryan. He's not the sly, smiling senator trying to spin a web and ruin now-Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas.

Now, Biden is a puddle. Not even the most loyal Biden hack would admit, at least privately, that Joe could handle a crisis like this one.

"Biden is a melting ice cube," wrote New York Democrat and antitrust litigator Lloyd Constantine on his blog, in a quote now widely circulated. "Those of us who have closely watched as time ravaged the once sharp or even brilliant minds of loved ones and colleagues, recognize what is happening to the good soldier Joe."

Biden isn't handling it well. But Cuomo seems to be handling it. Or at least he's facing it.

I asked a voter about this. She sat 6 feet away as we watched Cuomo give another dynamic briefing.

"Cuomo just looks more like a leader during a crisis," said the Lovely Sicilian I married, lo these many years ago. "He comes off as strong."

When we met, she was a modern dancer and choreographer, a liberal Democrat opposed to Ronald Reagan, marching in those irritating no-nuke parades. As the token conservative on campus, I didn't care. I was smitten and still am. She since converted to the path of reason, light, liberty and free markets, but now I fear she may fall back into her old heretical ways. Because of Cuomo. She insists his being Italian has nothing to do with it.

"I don't know enough about him," she said, echoing the thoughts of many. "But he seems stronger than Biden."

Knowing about a candidate doesn't matter anymore. Feelings matter and projecting them on TV in a time of fear matters. Cuomo is to the left on Second Amendment issues, and supports late-term abortion on demand. But Democratic governors and mayors who give briefings daily have a force field around them powered by friendly media goodwill that is impervious to criticism.

Cuomo gives great TV every day. He's a man of action and panache wearing different outfits — killer suits or that blue bomber jacket and various get-ups involving khaki and brown leather. He has style and empathy. He's praised by Republicans and Democrats alike for how he's facing all this. In a crisis, people reveal themselves. For now, Cuomo projects strength.

And Biden? Two weeks ago, Democrats were insisting he wasn't as feeble as he seems, that he was not suffering from a lack of mental acuity, that Biden was the strong leader who would win the White House for Democrats and hand them the awesome imperial power over our lives.

But things are different now. Biden fades, and Cuomo is ascendant.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

John Kass is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune who also hosts a radio show on WLS-AM.