I&I Editorial

Former Vice President Joe Biden is looking for a running mate for the November election. He’s getting plenty of suggestions. But just about anyone will improve his chances as long as the selection is more mentally capable than he is.

There’s no shortage of advice for the Democrat. CNN has listed “The Top 10 women Joe Biden might pick as vice president.” A media favorite is, of course, Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren. At least one cable host has campaigned for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. CBS reports that Biden is “challenged to pick a black woman.” Biden himself has said he’d pick Michelle Obama “in a heartbeat.”

Two things, though, we know for sure: One, Biden pledged to pick a woman. Two, he needs someone who can make up for his dismal campaign performances, in which he has the look of someone suffering from dementia and appears to be in sharp decline.

A little more than a month ago, we noted he had failed “his first attempt to look presidential.” In a speech streamed live from his home in Delaware, his delivery “was leaden.”

“He seemed tired,” we said. “He slurred his words.

“Worse, he repeatedly stumbled in his remarks, despite reading them from a teleprompter.”

The livestream was lowlighted by a string of words that made no sense.

“And uh, in addition to that, in addition to that, we have to make sure that we, uh, are in a position, that we are, we. Let me go to the second thing.”

Earlier in March, Biden tried to recite a passage from the Declaration of Independence. But he lost his way. It came out thusly:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women created by – you know, you know, the thing.”

There are several other examples, including a network appearance in which he confuses “you know, the World War II,” calls himself an “O’Biden-Bama Democrat,” and spins a bizarre tale about his hairy legs. He’s also told a crowd he was running for the U.S. Senate. Too often doesn’t know which state he’s in, and has trouble with basic facts (150 million people have been killed by guns since 2007?).

We won’t go on. We could fill much more space, but we won’t.

At the same time, it appears his faculties are fading, Biden seems to have also become more combative and easier to provoke. He told an Iowa voter he was a “damn liar,” addressed the man as “fat,” and challenged him to do pushups and to take him (Biden) on in an IQ contest. He called a female college student “a lying dog-faced pony soldier” during a New Hampshire stop. He also escalated an exchange with an auto worker in Detroit over Second Amendment rights, telling the man he was “full of s—.” Biden called him a “horse’s ass,” as well, and apparently told the fellow “I’m going to go outside with you,” acting more like a drunk student in a college-town bar looking for a fight than the White House candidate who exemplifies “honesty and humility, empathy and grace.”

As one of our contributors has said, Biden has deteriorated “from Uncle Joe to Angry Old Man.”

It’s to be expected the Trump campaign, Republicans, and right-of-center pundits would draw attention to Biden’s obvious troubles. But the concern over his condition has crept well outside that sphere:

“Democrats are conspiring to gaslight the American people by engineering the presidential election of a man clearly suffering from dementia, Joe Biden,” writes Ted Rall, who is no friend of President Donald Trump.

Hard left journalist Cenk Uygur has said: “Biden is either near senile or actually senile.”

Eoin Higgens of the leftist Common Dreams news site has tweeted that “Biden clearly has serious cognitive issues.”

The LA Progressive believes “Biden is utterly absent, showing every sign of dementia-driven un-electability a GOP strategist could ever lust for.”

It’s unlikely Biden will move aside to let someone else run. A brokered convention in which the party chooses another candidate is a slightly better bet. But it’s still April and one wonders how long Biden can last in the spotlight. If he is to have any chance, he needs to quickly find a running mate who doesn’t leave voters wondering if she’s losing her mind.

— Written by J. Frank Bullitt

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