By Dave Andrusko
If you don’t follow these developments minute-by-minute as I do, your head will spin when you read about the latest twists and turns in the saga of pro-abortion President Joe Biden. One day Joe is up (defiantly fending off calls for him to bow out and let someone else be the party’s presidential nominee); then down (party heavyweight and big donors are demanding that he withdraw); and then the latest—appealing to Biden to “make the right decision” (and soon!).
Tonight, Biden is taking a huge gamble, but one he seemingly must take: his first solo news conference since his dreadful debate performance which completely changed the narrative. Now it’s up to Biden to prove the debate was just “a bad night,” not a clear sign that he is rapidly deteriorating. The backdrop is that there are now 10 House Democrats and one Democratic senator who have called on Biden to resign.
Meanwhile, Biden’s friends in Hollywood, such as George Clooney, and friends in the media, such as Chuck Todd, are bailing on him.
Clooney wrote an opinion piece in which he began by expressing his love and affection for Biden. Then, zap, he tells us this Biden—the one who botched the debate—is the same man Clooney saw at a recent Hollywood fundraiser:
Is it fair to point these things out? It has to be. This is about age. Nothing more. But also nothing that can be reversed. We are not going to win in November with this president. On top of that, we won’t win the House, and we’re going to lose the Senate. This isn’t only my opinion; this is the opinion of every senator and Congress member and governor who I’ve spoken with in private. Every single one, irrespective of what he or she is saying publicly.
For his part, Todd positively eviscerated Biden on his podcast. Lindsay Kornick writes
NBC News chief political analyst Chuck Todd on Wednesday claimed a senior cabinet secretary told him in 2022 that President Biden couldn’t run again.
The former “Meet the Press” host discussed dwindling confidence in Biden’s campaign on his podcast “The Chuck ToddCast” with Politico columnist Jonathan Martin. While floating potential exit paths for Biden to step down, both criticized Democratic Party members for refusing to publicly voice their concerns.
“The politicians of the Democratic Party in the last few days have shown that a lot of them don’t have the courage of their convictions. They simply aren’t going to stand up and say in public what they’ve been telling folks like us in private for years. This is not a new story,” Martin said.
Todd then got intensely personal:
Everything I’ve learned, it has made me rethink a lot of the Biden biography. I still can’t believe he ran for president in the first place, given that his family was in crisis in 2018. You look at what has happened, I can’t believe he has put his family through this. And now, looking at his behavior now, in clinging to this, I think the entire narrative on Joe Biden is gonna change. Everything’s been about his ambition, and his ambition comes first.
Todd added
“There is no evidence he can serve four years.”
One other of a dozen different biting criticisms I could cite comes from Heather MacDonald at City Journal. She writes of what is by now common wisdom: The media, co-conspirators, has turned on a dime from covering up Biden’s verbal gymnastics to parsing his every sentence:
To measure the terror now gripping the mainstream media in the wake of the Biden–Trump debate, consider this: the New York Times is now fact-checking Joe Biden in favor of Donald Trump.
Monday’s print edition of the Times contains an article titled “In ABC Interview, Exaggerations about Polling and Trump.” The article applies a level of scrutiny to Biden’s Friday interview with ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos that is nearly unprecedented toward a Democratic candidate.
The Times now quotes Biden verbatim, with the clear intention of putting his verbal shuffles on full display.
Yikes! She ends her devastating take down of Biden and the media with these words:
A day after the Biden–Trump debate, the Times ran an editorial calling on Biden to withdraw from the presidential race. Since then, its news (scare quotes omitted) side has run devastating articles about the Democratic donor revolt against Biden, Biden’s long history of worrying mental slips, and the tumult within Democratic circles. That coverage has not affected Biden’s blithe confidence in his electoral chances or in his mental acuity. On Monday, Biden sent what the Times characterizes as a “defiant” letter to Congress, daring his Democratic critics to challenge him at the convention. He also delivered what the Times calls “fiery remarks” on MSNBC denouncing the skeptical “elites.” Until Biden bows before the inevitable, we can expect to live in an inverted reality in which the mainstream media applies the same journalistic standards to the Democratic frontrunner as it does to the Republican frontrunner. As soon as Biden withdraws, we will return to the status quo ante.