Biden’s social gathering lied to public – and itself – about him for too lengthy

Denial, anger, depression and acceptance. America’s Democrats went through these stages of grief on Thursday night as Joe Biden crashed and burned on the CNN debate stage.

After the event, the media spin rooms felt like a wake.

The talking heads all mournfully agreed that now may be time to accept what the rest of the world has understood for some time: Joe Biden is not fit to be a presidential candidate in 2024.

Non-Democrats might feel entitled to respond: what planet have these people been living on?

Last night may have been particularly agonising, as Biden slurred incoherently on every topic. But anyone with eyes to see has known for some time that America’s Commander-in-Chief is not in good health.

His presidency has become a sorry farce, as the 81-year-old pathetically mumbles and bumbles and stumbles about the world stage. His evident senility can by no means have been a total surprise. He merely confirmed the worst fears, and more, about his mental state.

For years now, the Democrats have insisted – often in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary – that Joe is fully fit and firing on all cylinders.

In meetings, they claim, he’s full of beans and always across the facts. But last month, in a significant breach of the party line, senior sources close to the President revealed that Biden seemed increasingly challenged in meetings.

In January, at a congressional meeting on national security and Ukraine, he spoke so faintly that he could barely be heard and paused for so long that aides worried that he had fallen asleep.

Their adamance that all is well, therefore, has often sounded as contrived as a North Korean press release about the vigour of Kim Jong Un. It is at best deluded – at worst an outright lie.

In 2020, during the last presidential election, talk of Biden’s incipient dementia was dismissed as malicious Republican gossip. But even then he was showing signs of decline.

The Covid pandemic that year ensured he didn’t have to go through the usual rigours of a campaign. Thanks to the lockdowns, he spent much of the build-up to the election in his basement at home in Delaware, communicating via Zoom.

Tellingly, he lost his temper when a friendly journalist asked him if he had taken a cognitive test. ‘Come on man!’ he replied. ‘That’s like saying, before you get on this programme, have you taken a test for if you take cocaine or not.’

Biden then was better than he is now. In the first 2020 presidential debate he got the better of Trump. But in other interviews and public performances that year he often lost his thread and appeared confused in interviews.

After Biden moved into the White House, his team has made every effort to cover up his declining capacities.

His press conferences are stage-managed to the last detail. The White House now has a PR protocol whereby the President is flanked by an entourage that walks slowly beside him across the lawn between the White House and Marine One, the presidential helicopter, to stop TV crews and photographers catching any more embarrassing footage.

Now, after the humiliation on CNN on Thursday, that charade appears to have ended at last. Joe and his wife Jill, the First Lady, still seem oblivious, at least in public.

At a post-debate event on Thursday, Jill addressed her husband before a crowd of die-hard fans: ‘Joe you did such a great job!’ she shouted, as if addressing a challenged child. ‘You answered every question!’

But outside Biden’s inner circle, most Democrats are ditching any pretence that all’s well.

So why did it take it so long for Democrats publicly to acknowledge this glaring reality? The alacrity with which party loyalists are changing their tune this week has caused some suspicion in Republican circles.

The theory now is that Democratic bigwigs, possibly at the urging of Barack Obama, pushed for the first presidential debate to be held early – it’s normally in September – so that, if Biden failed the Democratic machine would have time to replace him.

But if the Democrats were really so calculating, why didn’t they junk Biden last year before the nomination process began?

Biden now has all the delegates he needs to be confirmed at their Democratic convention in Chicago in August. Unless he chooses to stand aside, or dies, he will be all but unstoppable.

The truth is that the Democrats are paralysingly terrified about Trump’s possible comeback. That’s why they have clung to Joe Biden – the man who beat him at the ballot four years ago – in spite of his glaring decrepitude.

We are now less than 130 days away from the election, however, and the Democrats’ stubborn refusal to have accepted Biden’s mortality sooner may end up propelling Trump to the White House.

Most people aren’t thrilled at the prospect of Trump taking charge again. But, similar to how many British voters now feel towards Conservative Party, a growing number of Americans believe that the out-of-touch Democrats deserve to be punished at the ballot.

Joe Biden’s party has lied to the public – and itself – for too long.

Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator