If This Is the Democrats Best Hope, They Better Start Praying
By Dana Milbank, The Washington Post
29 August 19
This opinion piece by Dana Milbank at the Washington Post really illustrates
how serious Biden's gaffe and misstatements problems are. The case can be made
that Biden is not as bad as Trump, but that's super low bar. The case cannot be
made that Joe Biden is a stellar candidate. This is a very real problem. -
MA/RSN
There is no surer way to convince people you are going nuts than to stand in
front of a crowd and announce that you are not going nuts.
“I want to be clear: I’m not going nuts,” Joe Biden declared at a campaign stop
Friday as he struggled to identify the location of a speech he had just given.
Nothing is more likely to raise doubts about your mental acuity than to
misidentify the state you are in. “What’s not to like about Vermont?” Biden
asked on Saturday — in New Hampshire. He previously confused Burlington, Iowa,
with Burlington, Vt.
And nothing will get your relatives to demand power of attorney more rapidly
than misplacing a decade. “Bobby Kennedy and Dr. King had been assassinated in
the ’70s, the late ’70s, when I got engaged,” Biden said last week.
Oh, God love me! What is this malarkey?
The former vice president has admitted to being a “gaffe machine.” That’s false
modesty. He is the Lamborghini of gaffes.
He announced that “poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white
kids.” He located the El Paso and Dayton mass-shootings in “Houston” and
“Michigan.” He recalled a visit with survivors of the 2018 Parkland shooting —
before the shooting happened.
He confused “Margaret Thatcher” with Theresa May and Angela Merkel, referred to
the Second Amendment as the First, tripled the number of casualties of the 1970
Kent State shooting and mixed up his campaign website with a text-message code.
At the Iowa State Fair, he thundered: “We choose truth over facts!”
Less felicitously, he also joked about gay waiters, entitled millennials and
his too-tactile ways — and praised a segregationist’s “civility.” Things got so
bad that Biden’s neurologist offered a virtual doctor’s note, telling Politico
that he’s “as sharp as he was 31 years ago.”
True. Biden has been churning out malapropisms since 1987, when he was still
delivering Neil Kinnock’s speeches.
This is the man who claimed “I’ve known eight presidents, three of them
intimately.” Even with such intimate knowledge, he later confided: “I’d rather
be at home making love to my wife while my children are asleep.”
He proclaimed Barack Obama “the first African American in the history of the
United States.” During a rally, he called attention to “a three-letter word:
jobs.” He once introduced his running mate as “Barack America.”
Some say it’s unfair to draw attention to Biden when President Trump is the
most mendacious politician ever. I disagree: Biden’s gaffes are to be
celebrated, for they make him exciting. When he opens his mouth, nobody knows
what is going to come out — least of all Biden.
Biden once said to a paralyzed man in a wheelchair: “Stand up, Chuck.” He
mourned one woman (“God rest her soul”) who hadn’t died. He described Obama as
“the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean.”
He disclosed that Franklin D. Roosevelt went on television in 1929, before TV
existed. He predicted that if Obama were elected, “we’re going to have an
international crisis.” He declared that Hillary Clinton “might have been a
better pick than me” for vice president. He reported that “you cannot go to a
7-Eleven . . . unless you have a slight Indian accent.” He frankly told one
audience: “You all look dull as hell.”
Who can forget him saying “this is a big f---ing deal” after Obamacare’s
passage? Or admitting, as he tried to sell the stimulus, “There’s still a 30
percent chance we’re going to get it wrong”?
I am so certain that Biden’s gaffes will propel him to victory that I have
written him a draft acceptance speech, based on actual Bidenisms, for the
Democratic convention in Milwaukee:
Hello, Memphis! Ladies, gentlemen and other genders — there are at least three!
— I say: This is a big f---ing deal! I see poor kids in the arena and I see
white kids. I see Grandpa Finnegan, God rest his soul!
I would not be here in Manchester accepting your nomination without the support
of articulate, clean black people. And you disabled veterans — stand up! I have
known you intimately. And so I say: I would rather be making love to my wife!
You are a dull audience.
Fellow Democrats, there is a 30 percent chance everything I do will be wrong.
Bernie, Elizabeth, Kamala and the others would have been better picks than me.
But I am here because of a three-letter word: TRUTH. We choose truth over
facts! If elected, I promise: We will have an international crisis. Let me be
clear: I am not going nuts! So go to my website number and help me. Vote for
Joe America! Good night, Montgomery!
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