Rachel Maddow would like to sit down and talk with Joe Biden. She’s pleaded with him on air. She hasn’t talked with him since the campaign started. When he was high in the polls, he wouldn’t go on. When he was low in the polls, he wouldn’t go on, and now it is a two-person race and still he has not gone on.
Rachel is not dissing Joe, she just wants him to come on the show. I also do not believe he is dissing her in particular. She is not FOX. It seems to be considered necessary by the Biden campaign to keep Joe Biden as far from it as possible from both live media and the Biden campaign.
That strategy is a mistake. You cannot coddle a presidential candidate as though they were an endangered species needing protection from a hostile environment.
Can you have a Biden for President campaign without Joe Biden actually being present for more than a few moments here and there? We are in the process of finding out the answer to that question now.
The even larger question though is why? Why the need to hide Joe?
The answer is because the campaign wants you to vote for Joe Biden. Well, that is not quite accurate. The campaign wants you to vote for the Joe Biden of 2008-2016 that you remember. Perhaps not the Joe Biden of 2020 as he has appeared. As the Joe of 2020 himself accidentally put it, “vote for the other Biden.”
On video we can still see the former Joe Biden of 2016. A person given to reflection and of controllable temperament. A person consistently following their train of thought from start to finish. That’s who we remember when we think of Joe Biden. A person who could certainly sit down with Rachel Maddow for 90 minutes and have a cogent discussion.
Just stuttering?
Is it just stuttering? Nothing really to see here, just move along? The campaign has claimed that the seeming change in temperament is nothing really other than the effects of stuttering. That sounds at least plausible if we limit it to the multiple times he has forgotten President Obama’s name, what office he is running for, seemed confused in debates and muttered about “record players” or forgot the person he was standing next to was Senator Kamala Harris.
I also suffered with stuttering as a child and as a young adult, and I can imagine that is possible as a partial explanation. However, I also much later in life endured the unendurable by nursing my own mother through dementia. No one forgets that experience...that long decline with occasional rays of hope that prove only temporary. I don’t know what the thing is with Joe, but stuttering alone is not sufficient to explain the plethora of odd behavior we see...even as he has been relatively cloistered by the campaign.
Stuttering does not explain the fantasy of claiming multiple times he was arrested for trying to see Nelson Mandela. Even after, seemingly on one of his better days, he admitted that he was not arrested with Nelson Mandela...he then again later repeated the fantasy.
Stuttering does not explain the long disjointed ramblings involving battling “Corn pop” or the “ Hairy legs rubbed by kids and roaches“ stories.
Stuttering does not explain calling voters sedentary and damn liars.
Stuttering does not explain telling an Hispanic immigrant that “You should go vote for Trump, or another voter to vote for somebody else, or yet another voter to vote for someone else after pushing and poking them in the chest.
Stuttering does not explain calling a young woman a “lying dog-faced pony soldier.”
The focus on the Joe Biden of 2020 will now be blinding
The media has alternately ignored or vetted all the candidates in turn. When the question of 2020 Joe Biden’s oft-times erratic behavior has been brought up, they’ve traditionally laughed it off as “gaffes.”
Combining the periodic “gaffes” and “stuttering” explanations with keeping exposure to the Joe of 2020 to a bare minimum has allowed the primaries to reach this point. There has been voting for the Joe Biden of 2016. The campaign’s focus on keeping exposure to a minimum has been enabled by a field hitherto populated by multiple candidates considered more controversial by the media. No longer.
The Biden-Bernie March 15 debate
The issue of whether or not the Joe Biden of 2020 is in the midst of suffering from a decline in his cognitive powers will be forefront at the next debate. It will be so even if the moderators do not bring it up. It will be so even though Bernie Sanders will certainly not bring it up. It will be so because the Joe Biden of 2020 will finally be on stage for the first time unprotected by a flank of other candidates to give him cover. His refrain of “my speaking time is up” will not suffice this time to get him off the hook. There won’t be other candidates waving hands and shouting to get attention...serving to take the attention off the Joe Biden of 2020.
The Biden-Trump debates
The upcoming Biden-Bernie debate will show whether the Joe Biden of 2020 could be capable of sitting down with an intelligent, respectful and even-tempered Rachel Maddow...should his campaign change their strategy of keeping his exposure to a minimum. What it won’t show though is, if Biden wins the nomination, what would happen on stage with a laughing and taunting bully like Trump. A Trump that must be defeated. A Trump that has already started calling at his rallies for Biden to be put in a rest home (though using much rougher language). Trump is hated because of the cruelty he exhibits to the most vulnerable of us. Sadly, the Joe Biden of 2020 is treated as if he is amongst the most vulnerable of us. The Joe Biden of 2016 was not, but he may have long since left the stage.
When it is too late, Instead of cheers, the audience may end up asking, like Maddow, “Where’s Joe?”
