Biden Is Going Down and He’s Taking the Mainstream Left’s Credibility With Him

We might lose more than just an election

Built from photos by pkline, Alessandra Benedetti, and Vidar Nordli-Mathisen.

Politicians lie; it’s part of their job. Everyone knows that when a politician says “this bill charts a bold course for the 21st century,” they mean “Congress is as constipated as Joey Chestnut at age 100, and this nothing-burger was the best that we could do.” When they say “I stand by my colleague in the face of these baseless partisan attacks,” they mean “if the autopsy shows that the semen in the chest cavity is his, I’ll pretend I never knew the guy.” Sometimes they have to bullshit for the good of the party — everyone knows that. Everything Democratic bigwigs are saying right now in Biden’s defense should be taken with a Jupiter-sized grain of salt, because hey: They’re just doing their job.

Even so, the quantity and nature of the bullshit right now is stunning. Democrats were dispatched to Sunday morning talk shows to act as if Biden had made an itty bitty debate whoopsie, like saying “Slovenia” when he meant “Slovakia”. Of course, what actually happened was that Biden showed that the notion that he can serve until 2029 is utterly delusional. “He had a bad night” is fast becoming to Democrats what “Trump sends mean tweets” is to Republicans: It’s the phrase that minimizes the fact that your candidate is egregiously unfit for office.¹ If you had asked me what “bad night” means a week ago, I would have said “0-for-5 with three strikeouts”, or “went to Denny’s, my steak was overcooked, and the guy in the booth next to me got stabbed.” Apparently, the phrase “bad night” now includes revealing to the nation that we’re currently balanced on the precipice of three-to-five national crises.

The ballsiest gaslighting came from an email sent from the Biden campaign to supporters. Here’s how the message from Deputy Campaign Manager Rob Flaherty began:

That is flabbergasting spin. The minimization and dismissiveness are gobsmacking, as is the choice to blame the “panic” on “your MAGA uncle”. As if Ezra Klein, Tom Friedman, Jonathan Chait, Nicholas Kristof, Maureen Dowd, Matt Yglesias, Frank Bruni, David Remnick, Bill Maher, Yascha Mounk, David Ignatius, Gail Collins and many others are die-hard Trumpists and not the people who would (and did!) support Biden if he could run a competent campaign! I may have never witnessed such brazen turd-polishing in my entire life — I think to reach the same level of chutzpah, we’d need to imagine press releases from historical events, such as:

Bullying came next. Flaherty wrote: “First of all: Joe Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee, period.” Shortly thereafter: “Joe Biden is the Democratic nominee, period.” (was he dictating the message via telegram? “BIDEN NOMINATED — STOP! RESISTANCE FUTILE — STOP!”) Flaherty cited deeply unconvincing polling showing that Biden is the Democrats’ best shot. He called those calling for Biden to drop out “the bedwetting brigade” (ed note: Fuck you, Rob). And he wrote this utterly astounding passage:

Yeah! Why is the media talking about the Commander in Chief’s diminished mental state instead of covering a bunch of dweebs doing some dumb TikTok bullshit at an airport!?!? DO YOUR JOB, LAMESTREAM MEDIA!!! For the record: I can’t find this alleged “awesome clip” (can we get a fact check on that?) anywhere. I’ve scoured social media: Joe Biden didn’t tweet it, Rob Flaherty didn’t tweet it — as far as I can tell, the clip doesn’t exist. But regardless: WHY AREN’T THE MEDIA TALKING ABOUT SOME INANE CLIP THAT DOESN’T EXIST INSTEAD OF TALKING ABOUT THE FACT THAT THE ONE GUY WHO STANDS BETWEEN US AND THE POSSIBLE END OF DEMOCRACY CLEARLY ISN’T UP TO THE JOB!?!?!?

The purpose of Flaherty’s email is to pressure people, especially the media, into parroting the Biden campaign’s nonsense. And another memo from the campaign dialed up the pressure even more. Anticipating the dismal polling that would follow the debate (which has already begun to trickle in), campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote:

"If we do see changes in polling in the coming weeks, it will not be the first time that overblown media narratives have driven temporary dips in the polls."

Message: Anyone in the media who admits the obvious fact of Biden’s condition is helping elect Trump.

Thankfully, few media figures have given in to this bullying. A couple tried to massage the situation: Mika Brzezinski stuck up for her long-time friend, and The Philadelphia Inquirer embarrassingly gave in to Twitter and tried to “what about Trump?” the whole thing, but even those efforts admitted Biden’s “bad night”. The most ridiculous partisanship came — as you might expect — from Resistance Twitter. That deep blue corner of Hell placed the blame squarely on those in media who dare acknowledge what everybody saw. And articles, tweets, and other comments that admit the problem are often met with replies that excoriate the author for “campaigning for Trump”. And that’s true even though the author is almost always some true blue dweeb (like me!) who is worried specifically because we want to beat Trump! And that dweeb usually also admits that we will vote for Joe Biden’s corpse if it comes to that — we just don’t want it to come to that.

Anyone who minimizes Biden’s state is torpedoing their credibility. That’s a little bit true for political figures — who at least have the excuse that it’s their job to brazenly lie — and extremely true for media figures, who are definitely not supposed to carry water for a campaign. The good news and the bad news is that the easiest time to admit the problem is right now. Because despite what Rob Flaherty would have you believe, Biden is not the nominee. He is the presumptive nominee — Democrats have until August to pick someone else. And that’s why every liberal pundit who ever donned glasses and a sweater vest wants Biden to quit: They’ve all concluded that swapping nominees is less risky than sticking with Biden. At the moment, being candid about the problem is the anti-Trump play.

But that won’t be true after the convention. If Biden becomes the nominee, then it will be true that acknowledging Biden’s cognitive problems plays into Trump’s hands. And that’s when you’ll see obfuscation from people who should know better. Media will downplay Biden’s problems, and Democrats will swear that they were in a meeting with Biden where he recited Plato’s Republic word-for-word (this has already happened a bit and I think that people have some explaining to do). Speaking as someone who counts as a media figure (as long as notoriety, wealth, or influence aren’t requirements for that title): I’m certain that I’ll feel that pressure. I loathe Trump, and I think that even a second Biden term that probably involves his death or an invocation of the 25th Amendment is still better than Trump (yes, it’s that bad!). So, I’ll feel pressure to go easy on Biden. And I like to think that I won’t immolate my credibility, but…who knows? I can’t 100 percent promise that I’ll never write a column called “LOL — Check Out These AWESOME Biden Staffers Doing the Cupid Shuffle as the Biden Revolution Marches On!!!”

If we get stuck with Biden, and the mainstream left spends the fall trying to convince people not to believe their eyes and ears, then the left will fall into a credibility hole that will take years if not generations to escape. It will be “actually the Covid rules don’t apply if you’re protesting for a righteous cause” times a hundred — it will be a humiliation that gets thrown in our faces over and over again until the sun burns out. It won’t even matter much if individual pundits, publications, and office holders tell the truth; people will just remember that “the Democrats” — broadly speaking — lied to people’s faces for months. And we’ll do this to protect a candidate who will almost certainly lose anyway. My firm belief since the debate is that Joe Biden will not win a second term — “period”, to borrow a figure of speech — and that Democrats should plan accordingly. Since it’s become clear that a Biden candidacy will pressure everyone on the left to throw our credibility into a blast furnace, I’m now worried about losing a lot more than the election.

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1. To be clear: I think that Biden can make it to January. But he obviously cannot make it until January 2029.