Status Quo Joe by Nancy Ohanian



New York Magazine story about 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. The former veep didn’t exactly quell those fears in his trip through Iowa. It began with a remark at a town hall hosted by the Asian & Latino Coalition in Des Moines, where Biden wanted to dispel the 'notion that somehow if you’re poor, you cannot do it. Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.' He corrected himself immediately, but the gaffe was out. Thursday wasn’t over: On a soapbox at the state fair, he issued the accidentally Orwellian line: 'We choose truth over facts.' And for the second time this summer, he caught himself as he referred to former prime minister Theresa May as Margaret Thatcher, who passed six years ago." Matt Stieb'sMagazine story about Biden gaffe-ing his way across Iowa , was filed and published yesterday before the biggest Biden embarrassment of the day. The Status Quo Joe handlers have let him off his leash for the weekend in Iowa. They probably wish they hadn't. "Despite his strong polling lead in Iowa and on the national level," wrote Stieb, "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. '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. The former veep didn’t exactly quell those fears in his trip through Iowa. It began with a remark at a town hall hosted by the Asian & Latino Coalition in Des Moines, where Biden wanted to dispel the 'notion that somehow if you’re poor, you cannot do it. Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.' He corrected himself immediately, but the gaffe was out. Thursday wasn’t over: On a soapbox at the state fair, he issued the accidentally Orwellian line: 'We choose truth over facts.' And for the second time this summer, he caught himself as he referred to former prime minister Theresa May as Margaret Thatcher, who passed six years ago."

The following day Biden claimed he was VP during the Parkland NRA massacre-- and, cluelessly repeated it at three different campaign stops. The Parkland massacre happened more than a year after he had been replaced by Mike Pence as VP.

For Democrats concerned with Biden’s propensity to flub on camera, the next few months will be a testing ground to see if he can manage not to undermine himself on a smaller debate stage in September and in speeches around the country. “Everybody else is out there doing a heavy schedule and he’s not,” Adam Jentleson, a former staffer for Harry Reid, told Politico, criticizing Biden’s light schedule up to this point. “If we’re talking about, all told, a year-and-a-half here, that’s the real distance that people have to go, so part of a primary is vetting candidates and seeing if they have what it takes to go the distance.”

But Saturday Biden screwed up even worse, getting into an argument with a co-ed working for Charlie Kirk's right-wing organization and physically grabbing her-- on video. The organization is Turning Point USA, notorious racists and anti-Semites funded by defeated GOP crackpot billionaires Foster Friess (WY) and Bruce Rauner (IL) plus the DeVos family; one of the owners of the Wisconsin Republican Party, Ed Uihlein; the NRA; the wing-nut foundation of Wisconsin neo-fascist brothers Harry and Lynde Bradley; and the owner of Home Depot, Bernie Marcus.

She asked Biden how many genders there are and he responded "There are at least three." She asked him to name them and he said, "Don't play games with me, kid," and claimed he was the first one to come out in support of gay marriage, a spurious claim to begin with after his long anti-gay record in the Senate.



