The Wall Street Journal has the Left anxious if not infuriated for stating the obvious.
The president of the United States, long gone from the barely 30-year-old upstart elected to a Delaware seat in the U.S. Senate back in the stone age of 1972, is “slipping.”
The Wall Street Journal piece that got things stirring is titled:
Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping
Participants in meetings said the 81-year-old president performed poorly at times. The White House said Biden is sharp and his critics are playing partisan politics.
Among other things, the Wall Street Journal reports that in a recent meeting, Biden:
• “[S]poke so softly at times that some participants struggled to hear him.”
• “[S]ometimes closed his eyes for so long that some in the room wondered whether he had tuned out.”
• Had Speaker Mike Johnson worried that the “president’s memory had slipped about the details of his own policy.”
There’s more here of this. But the long and short is that those meeting with Biden in private are seeing nothing more than what the American people and the world at large have witnessed repeatedly as Biden goes about doing what presidents do — working in the glare of the televised public eye.
There are plenty of Americans who have had to deal with a beloved older relative as they begin the irreversible slow slide into dementia. As it happens, I am one of those, watching my late mother move through the last couple of her 99 years ever so slowly fading away, confused, uncertain, unrecognizing friends and family members.
There is nothing to be ashamed of.
The problem here is glaringly obvious. Joe Biden is not just some grandfatherly old guy. He is the sitting president of the United States. The nuclear codes are always nearby. His ability to send U.S. troops into battle — or withdraw them as many feel he did in the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal that killed 13 Americans, is always at hand.
Not to mention that if all of this mental deterioration is seen and observed by Americans whether they are congressional leaders or not, one can be certain that America’s adversaries in places like Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran are watching as well.
Thus the very fact that Biden allies would go about trying to defend him by attacking those, like House Republicans, who observe the obvious about his mental acuity is troubling.
Case in point is this view over there in Mediaite that refers to the Wall Street Journal piece as “a damning Wall Street Journal report that relies heavily on criticism from House Republicans.”
Again, there is little or nothing in the Wall Street Journal report that hasn’t been observed in some form or another by the American public at large.
The glaringly obvious point is that there is nothing political or partisan about dementia and old age. Some people make it to 100 and are clear as a bell. Some people have an energetic and youthful physical condition that goes with them to a very old age. Some are increasingly mentally or physically not with it in their 50s. There is nothing new or unusual about that.
The problem is that Joe Biden is not anybody. He is Joe Biden, president of the United States. And quite clearly Joe Biden is not doing well either mentally or physically. And to say so is hardly some Republican conspiracy theory.
The real question at this point in a presidential election year is what to do about it.
And the obvious answer in the immediate situation to that is: have the Biden family get their Joe to do his country a service — and withdraw.
The hard political reality is obvious in one poll after another: former President Trump is repeatedly in the lead and will, in fact, defeat him.
But November is six months away.
Back there in February of 2024, the New York Post got the answer exactly right in an editorial. The headline:
Jill Biden and Dems committed elder abuse on Joe — now they must force him to step aside
The Post, the Wall Street Journal’s sister publication, got it exactly right.
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