NRO’s Michael Brendan Dougherty sounds the notes I have sought to hit in our coverage of President Biden’s long goodbye:
The man was stabbed in the face by people he loyally served, such as former president Barack Obama, who was reportedly orchestrating the various statements and leaks that undermined confidence in Joe Biden. He almost didn’t have to bother; the media was suddenly in full froth. The whole thing had the quality of a Warner Bros. cartoon, with anvils falling out of the sky onto Joe Biden’s head, timed to do maximum damage.
Press: Oh, by the way, President Biden hasn’t had an unscripted full cabinet meeting in years. BANG! Exclusive: Hollywood Donors Are Abandoning Him. BANG! Oh, the Biden family has a scheduled meeting for a photo shoot; let’s present it as a meeting at which they are discussing potential resignation. BANG! Exclusive: Did you know Biden has just been skipping his meetings with foreign leaders, even ones who deliberately set them early in the afternoon so he could sleep? BANG! Latest: Biden is being minded almost exclusively by Hunter Biden, who you might remember is the legally imperiled monster who addicted his deceased brother’s wife to crack. BANG!
There are some who similarly want to praise the Democratic Party and its elites for soberly organizing, for reinstituting the smoke-filled room and saving their party from the extremism of the voters.
This too is a special form of insanity. The Democratic Party and the enormous media hive mind that protects it had been deliberately ignoring and covering up Joe Biden’s deterioration for years. They would have continued to go along with this outrageous abuse of the executive branch — deliberately running an incompetent — for as long as they could. They only stopped because the debate performance so badly exposed them that they could no longer collectively will themselves to deny a fact that the vast majority of the public and the vast majority of Democratic voters had accepted long ago: that Joe Biden was too old and infirm to be president of the United States.
Dougherty’s column is “Biden’s graceless exit” (behind NRO’s paywall). As I have said and will have to repeat as we cover these events, there is more to come.
