Et tu Buzzfeed? Joe Biden “slipups make it convenient to question if Biden, at 76, is up for the job”
Biden’s electability versus Trump being called into question from the left.
Joe Biden has always been a gaffe machine, but this time it seems different. He’s in the 9th inning of his political career, and doubt are rising as to whether he’s up to the task.
Of course those criticisms are coming from the right, with The Federalist and Washington Free Beacon, among others, gleefully churning out lists Biden’s recent gaffes.
Republican SuperPACs are taking video notes:
But the problem runs deeper than Joe-being-Joe — Biden is also being criticized by the left. A Buzzfeed analysis by its reporter covering Biden in Iowa wrote about The Uneasiness Of Joe Biden’s Presidential Campaign Is About More Than The Gaffes. The reporter described how at times “Biden’s gravitas gave way to rambling” raising concerns:
It can be easy to miss and hard to put your finger on, especially when Biden leads the Democratic presidential field in polling and puts on his aviator-clad frontrunner’s face. But Biden presents with a vibe of doubt. He can come across as a candidate who’s worried that he’s running out of time — and that he’s wasting yours. And he’s not always sure how to make the most of it.
Even deeper, it calls into question whether Joe is up for the job, the Buzzfeed reporter wrote:
And sometimes Biden says the wrong thing. Many dispatches from the Iowa trip dwelled on his verbal blunders here.
He botched a line from his stump speech at the state fair. (“We choose truth over facts.”) He told the Asian & Latino Coalition audience that “poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids” before catching himself and adding “wealthy kids, black kids, Asian kids.” He also blanked for a second when he seemed to confuse former British prime ministers Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May. Two days later, at a forum on gun control, he talked about Parkland again and recalled meeting with the survivors when he was vice president. But the high school shooting happened more than a year after Biden left office. His staff later explained he had meant the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in Connecticut.
“Wouldn’t it be nice,” his deputy campaign manager tweeted, “to have a president who consoles Americans in their time of need so often that he sometimes mistakes the timing?”
The slipups make it convenient to question if Biden, at 76, is up for the job. Trump, 73, has jumped on them. “Does anybody really believe he is mentally fit to be president?” Trump asked Sunday.
Vice also is writing about how Iowa Democrats Are Getting Nervous About Biden’s Trail of Gaffes:
Former Vice President Joe Biden delivered a series of verbal fumbles and gaffes during his longest swing to date through Iowa, providing fodder for President Trump’s accusations that he’s slipped mentally and left some local Democrats worried that he’s lost a step….
“It’s dangerous territory, obviously. It plays into the narrative that Donald Trump would like to create about him,” said Grant Woodard, a Des Moines-based Democratic power player and former congressional chief of staff. “His greatest asset in this race is he’s perceived to be the most electable in the general election and these unforced errors he creates undermine that argument.”
Other Democrats in the state privately expressed concerns about Biden’s gaffes and what they meant, though many didn’t want to take potshots on-record to fuel a narrative they saw as beneficial to Trump.
“Joe’s too old,” one unaligned Iowa Democratic official told VICE News.
Even The New York Times sounds a siren of concern:
Some of his advisers said in interviews that they were privately nervous that his recent gaffe spree would become cemented into the larger narrative of the presidential race. They also say that Mr. Biden faces an unfair double standard.
Yet there is a real political risk for Mr. Biden. Some party activists have already been worried that, at 76, he may be too old to go toe-to-toe with Mr. Trump, who is 73, and win. If the accumulation of verbal missteps continues, some Democrats say, it will eventually sow doubts about what many primary voters believe is Mr. Biden’s biggest strength: that he is best positioned to beat Mr. Trump.
Biden is doing well in the polls, but it’s long race. And once a narrative takes hold, it may be hard to stop. And if the narrative is one of unelectability versus Trump, that removes the very reason for Biden’s polling strength, New York Magazine notes:
Despite his strong polling lead in Iowa and on the national level, some local party figures expressed concern this weekend about Biden’s onstage performance and the notion of his electability. (As the candidate characterized himself in December: “I am a gaffe machine.”) “He isn’t as compelling verbally,” the Madison County party chairman told the Washington Post. “There is starting to be a real fear that he cannot hold his own in the debate against Donald Trump.” The party chair from Grundy County wished “he’d get his mojo back,” and reminisced over the Biden of 2012, when he debated vice-presidential hopeful Paul Ryan.
It’s the ninth inning. Joe Biden needs to bring his A game. His unrelenting gaffes may be as sign that he doesn’t have an A game.
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Comments
Can the 25th amendment be applied proactively?
Biden stood by a corrupt traitor for eight years. He’s up for the “job,” all right.
Gaff Spree sounds like a battleship.
LMAO. This is why you read the comments.
Biden’s age isn’t what makes him an idiot.
He certainly looks his age, face as hard as plaster. Imagine having to be the embalmer trying to get anything through that corpse without cracking the skin.
A veritable “shovel ready project” if ever there was one.
So what’s the Dems’ ultimate plan – get him into the White House so that his otherwise unelectable VP can take over when his dementia diagnosis becomes public?
As I noted, the 25th amendment. The Dimentiachurian candidate!
Dems don’t care about his gaffes per se – except for his opponents in the primary – they only care if it hurts his chances in the general. I am not sure they are even gaffes – vs. Joe forgetting to not say what he actually thinks. They aren’t worried about him doing the job – all he has to do sign the shit that Nancy passes so we can find out what is in it.
If he wins the primary, they will go all in on him and cover up the “gaffes” – “Just Joe being Joe, regular guy. Hey, over there, SQUIRREL!!!!”
No, they are worried about whether the voters he needs to win will decide not to vote for a doddering figurehead who will rubber stamp an out of control progressive agenda while calling for another beer summit.
Can you imagine the damage the crooked FBI/DOJ cabal, the crooked DHS and the IRS can do under this dolt?
I am sure he is in top tip shape.
Occam’s Razor: Slow Joe is, and always has been, a world class dummy. Stupid is his default position. He has been wrong on every major policy decision for 45 years.
I can’t say this is shocking to me, I have been expecting it. Of course part of it is Biden being Biden, but the hits keep coming against him and clueless Plugs Biden just doesn’t get it, he is not going to win the nomination. Unless he comes out as Transgender so we will have a second one to live in the WH, he is toast.
The powers that be are wanting a woman, having a woman of color (and Warren despite the lies of her being Native American, just isn’t colorful enough.) Bernie is tanking and they’ve barely started on cutting his feet out from under him.
Harris is Duh One Redux, but they will settle for Warren if they absolutely have to. That depends on Harris not pulling a Biden.
I had thought the believers in Harris (winning nomination, not being a fan) would have figured it out by now.
She may have been chosen by one faction of the party, but another is more than happy to destroy her. Ms. Gabbard did that in < 2 minutes. Imagine what can be done with a bit more time. There's lots more. She will not get the nomination. Of course, I have no idea who will 🙂
Joe is teflon coated. The democrats haven’t been able to get rid of him. He has 47 percent of the black dem vote.
When Biden was as sharp as he gets he was a gaffe machine. Now he’s a gaffe machine full time.
He never was very smart and increasing age hasn’t brought it.
He’s dumber than a log. But dangerous, very dangerous. All the commies are dangerous.
When you were not the sharpest tool in the shed in your prime, it’s tough when age takes a couple of cards out of the deck for Good Old Slow Joe. Not playing with a full deck these days are you Joe?
The fact that Uncle Sniffy is leading in the polls because of his “electability” says a lot about the current Democratic party, doesn’t it?
As noted above, Biden has a huge lead over Warren and Sanders among black Democrats, who are about one quarter of Democrats overall. Harris doesn’t even register with them after Gabbard KO’d her. Iowa and New Hampshire are both much whiter and older than the nation. Biden fits right into that demographic.
I don’t doubt that the Dem PTBs are trying to derail Biden now. They just announced the fourth debate will have the same qualification criteria as the third so they must be desperate to keep some of the lower tier candidates in the race, probably Booker and Buttigeig. Maybe Klouchbar in hopes she’ll pull some votes from Biden in Iowa.
I think the race is going to come down to Biden vs Warren. Sanders is gonna fade, and I’m betting Warren is going to remind too many people of Hillary as well as be far too leftist for rank and file Democrats.
And, no, there will not be successful Draft Michelle movement even if Biden winds up winning.
Trump will still get more “Black” votes than Biden. It’s the economy stupid, will rule the day again. Joe will try the “he’s going to put you in chains” line at all the black churches and Donna Brazille will swoon over him, but the intelligent people will pull the lever for Trump.
I look over the Democrat candidates for President, and then I try to wake up.
Biden wasn’t up for the job in 1988, 31 years ago, and he sure hasn’t gotten better with age.
Not one of the idiots in the current field are fit to be president. I expect the real candidate to enter the race at a later date. The question is – who?
I think it was supposed to be Jussie Smollett, another blackish gay Chicagoan, a recipe that worked in 2008. But that blew up when his big political debut was exposed as a hoax. Now they have to find someone else.
Biden is too old but who else? The rest are just pretty incompetent. Some are saying Tulsi Gabbard, but really? She has no high level experience. I understand there’s some power behind her, otherwise she would not have gotten one on one meetings with President-elect Trump, and with Bashar al Assad. She has no knowledge of most issues beyond her patriotic lines and military experience.
Here’s the logical inconsistency underneath her candidacy as I see it. She says she joined the military to fight back against al Qaida after 9/11. But how does she know al Qaida did it? Because I guess Lawrence Eagleburger went on TV on 9/11/01, that very day, to say al Qaida did it — while NYC was in chaos and Bush and Cheney were flying around for whatever reason. No time for investigation, and the perp was already announced. So she rushed into war without really knowing what she was doing.
Now she self-righteously criticizes those who voted to go into Iraq, and those who ally tactically with some version of al Qaida from time to time in the middle east. But really she doesn’t know jack about the real causes of world events, from her time in the military as a medic and a policewoman.
I thought it’s been easy for ALL 40 years he’s been in office not just now.
The dufus idjit Biden has never been up to any job. That’s why he became a ripoff artiest – a.k.a., a career Demoncrat politician. He has never accomplished anything. WHAT IS HIS LEGACY?
why aren’t they asking questions about his health like they did with McCain when he was running?
The presidential debates will be about a year from now. Then Biden will be a year older, another year of cognitive decline.
And if he were elected, he’d get much older still in office. His VP choice would be very important, because in the back of many people’s minds, he might not serve out his first term.