A doddering old president and bulldog former president debate the nation's future while Democrats worry about their party's future

The whole world was watching—literally—as U.S. President Joe Biden stumbled and mumbled his way through a 90-minute debate with former president Donald Trump last night. For much of his presidency, Biden has been protected by a coterie of loyalists--and their media sycophants--who’ve insisted he is in full control of his faculties and his job as the most powerful man in the world.

 

Don’t believe your lying eyes, they told the world. Last night the world saw who was lying.

 

Democrats today (and Washington’s Deep State) are in either shell shock or panic mode as they look down through the remaining months before the election and wonder if their man can ever restore Americans’ confidence that he can lead them another four years. If he’s as doddering today as he appeared to be at the CNN debate last night, how will he be when he’s 86 years old and still in charge of the world’s largest nuclear arsenal?

 

Speculation is already circling among Democrats as to who would or could replace Biden as the head of the Democratic ticket. Vice President Kamala Harris? She’s even more unpopular than Biden. And if the party wants someone else, it cannot tell Kamala there’s a glass ceiling after all! Still, all the speculation is a waste of time. The presidency has been Joe Biden’s lifelong dream, and he’s not going to simply slip off into the night now that it is in his grip. Joe Biden’s ego may be the one remaining strength of his mental capacities.

 

For his part, Donald Trump probably bristled at the debate rules that prevented him from roughshodding Biden like he did Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and fellow Republicans during the 2016 presidential race. Yet, ironically, those rules actually helped him, keeping him on target, making him even look, dare I say, almost normal in his relative restraint. Of course, a plethora of lies poured from his mouth, but he at least held back from taking full mocking advantage of Biden’s disintegration.

 

Biden’s handlers over the past week obviously pumped him full of statistics. He seemed programmed as he recited them even if some of them were patently false. Biden told lies, too, lies that CNN commentators totally ignored. Russia, for example, has shown absolutely no inclination to take over all of Ukraine, much less Poland and other Eastern European countries, as Biden claimed again and again.

 

Biden was best when he pointed to Trump’s utter allegiance to the nation’s top 1 percent—the tax cuts to the wealthy, the suppression of organized labor and worker rights, the judges and justices he appointed to reward the rich and punish everyone else. However, viewers were watching Biden’s facial and body movements, listening to the raspy, uncertain voice, not really listening to the words.

 

The Democratic National Committee has become an extremely insular organization ever since Bill and Hillary Clinton excised the party’s soul and replaced it with unprincipled (and largely unsuccessful) formulas and algorithms to raise lots of money (Wall Street) and hopefully win elections. Just as the DNC worked to undermine Bernie Sanders’ candidacy eight years ago, it made sure this campaign that Biden was unchallenged in the primaries.

 

They got their man. Now what are they doing to do with him?

 

And how is the nation going to fare over the next four years? That’s the real concern that emerged from last night’s debate.