If you toggled between MSNBC and CNN immediately after the first presidential debate, Democrat panelists on both channels took turns saying some variation of, “This wasn’t a good night for Joe Biden” or the party might need to “figure out” a solution to an obvious problem. Namely, that Biden is plainly not capable of being president right now, let alone for another four years.
As happy as Donald Trump’s supporters surely are with the display, the event puts the nation in a highly precarious situation — what won’t Democrats do now, this late in the game, to win the election?
John King on CNN said, “There has to be a conversation with the president after tonight.” Van Jones on the same channel said Biden should “consider taking a different course now.” A former aide to Biden, Kate Bedingfield, also said on CNN that it was an exceptionally “bad night” for Biden.
Politico headline: “Dems freak out over Biden’s debate performance: ‘Biden is toast.'”
It’s not really like Democrats are in a dramatically different position between now and yesterday. Or for the last two years. Anyone paying loose attention in that time has known that Biden is simply not up to the task. Literally, today, it’s a national security threat that he’s in office. The only difference is that this was a nationally televised debate, and for the first time in Biden’s presidency he was placed directly next to his competition. It made everything that everyone has said all along real.
To guess what happens next is to stare into an inky, bottomless pit and search for what might rapidly crawl toward the surface.
For a major party — not to mention one as ruthless as the Democrat Party — to find itself in desperation of this magnitude is uncharted territory. Their presumptive nominee is dying, and their opposition is a man they swear will end democracy (by which they really mean threaten their status and perhaps put them in legal jeopardy).
If you thought all of 2020 was a wild ride — the Covid hysteria, the race riots, and everything before — the next four months now are going to be a rollercoaster straight through all seven circles of hell.
Democrats have already tried to keep Trump off state ballots. They’ve tried to bankrupt him. They’ve tried to put him in prison. And now their candidate to defeat him is indisputably ailing in health, not to mention an irrefutably bad president with a terrible record in office.
Have you ever cornered a rabid animal? That’s the situation that the debate has left us with, except the sick beast has a gun.
