Biden speaking in Texas. Screenshot

Even as anti-Bernie Dems - Amy, Pete, Beto, Reid - rush to embrace his deeply deficient campaign, Joe Biden repeatedly, woefully, often wincingly shows he's not up to the task. He is, to be clear, neither a villain nor a fool like the monster in the White House. He is a decent guy who has long served his country, who wants the best for that country and who evinces real principles in defense of it. But his time is past; he belongs to an earlier world of clubby, moneyed, establishment Democratic liberalism that, in these apocalyptic times, just won't cut it. And a lifetime as a self-described "gaffe machine" doesn't help - especially as, at age 77, his mental acuity increasingly, painfully wanes. (Grim fact: It happens.) Though he bills himself as the “no malarkey” candidate - thus fatally dating himself by using a term nobody under 60 would get - he boasts a history of dodges, fictions, fumbles, outright lies and often oblique racist blunders, like bragging he worked with segregationist lawmakers who really weren't bad guys, telling a fake story about getting arrested in South Africa, assuming any kid wearing a hoodie must be black and poor, declaring he'd appoint (sic) the first black woman to the Senate though two already serve there, and suggesting black families cure racism by putting "record players" in their kids' rooms. White paternalism, thy name is Biden.

During the campaign, he's had so many "wait, what?" moments that half the stories about him include the term "brain freeze." In New Hampshire, he called a voter a “lying, dog-faced pony soldier,” and because that wasn't bad enough his team then got the source of the insult wrong - a Tyrone Powers, not John Wayne movie. At the Charleston debate he claimed 150 million Americans, half the country, had been killed by guns. He called Chris Wallace "Chuck" and said he was running for Senate and professed to have worked on the Paris Climate accord with a long-dead Chinese leader. And Monday, in Texas, he briefly turned Super Tuesday into Super Thursday before badly bungling the Declaration of Independence. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” he nobly began, before stumblingly melting down into, “All men and women created by...go...you know...you know the thing.” R-i-g-h-t. The memes swiftly took off, as did gleeful coverage by right-wing media -"The Dem establishment is in deep doo right now" - and worried tweets about how quickly an opportunistic, malevolent, lying Trump would chew him up like a rabid dog with a bone. “Glad they’re cashing all their chips in on this guy,” read one. Also, "This is just elder abuse in service of corporate power" and, "Abort, Abort." Biden was looking for this: "We know these things to be self-evident, that all men (and women) are created equal." We also know these things to be self-evident: We can do better.

Supercut: Biden stumbles his way through the final Democratic debate pic.twitter.com/d1S7mYNXCx SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Never Miss a Beat. Get our best delivered to your inbox.





— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 15, 2020