Is Joe Biden Senile?

Remember the psychiatrists who were running around saying that President Trump was mentally incapacitated and needed to be committed to a psychiatric institution, post haste.

Remember how seriously the media left took their deranged pronouncements. You probably even recall that Trump took a test showing that he had all of his faculties… only to have the media elite declare that the test was incorrect.

So now, we have a leading Democratic presidential candidate, the man who is going to save the party from Bernie Sanders, making gaffe after gaffe. I am not a physician and will not venture a diagnosis, but I am certainly not the only one who believes that Joe Biden is suffering from an early stage of senile dementia. OK, maybe not such an early stage....

And yet, how many neurologists have been asked on television talk shows to offer a medical opinion? Last I noticed, the answer was zero. To the mind of the American media Joe Biden is just fine… no matter what he says or does. That should scare the bejesus out of all of us. 

Last night in Houston, for example, Biden tried his hand at quoting the Declaration of Independence. He did get the first thirteen words right before losing it and forgetting the rest. In his words:

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

"you know the thing"-- and they think that Donald Trump is less than intellectually coherent.

Biden also mistook Super Tuesday for Super Thursday.

“Look, tomorrow’s Super Thurs… Tuesday,” he said, just catching himself in time, as members of the audience laughed. “I’ll tell you what, I’m rushing ahead, aren’t I?”

On Sunday, in a rare television interview Biden called Chris Wallace: Chuck. Thereby he showed definitively why his handlers do not allow him to television interviews.

And we should not forget last week that Biden announced that he was a candidate for the United States Senate:

Where I come from, you don't go very far unless you ask. My name's Joe Biden. I'm a Democratic candidate for the United State's Senate. Look me over. If you like what you see, help out. If not, vote for the other Biden. Give me a look though, okay?

If any Republican had said such things, his candidacy would be over.

For now, even Trevor Noah is perplexed. To his credit, Noah offers the correct analogy, in discussing Biden’s calling Chris Wallace, Chuck:

The name thing on its own is bad, because interviews are sort of like sex. It doesn’t matter how well it goes, if you call the person the wrong name at the end, the whole thing is ruined.

But, how does it happen that Biden is not yet ruined. For the record, I am writing this before we know Super Tuesday results.

And yet, considering the consummately earth-shattering badness of Bernie Sanders, perhaps the Democratic Party feels that anything would be better than Bernie.

If would like some rank speculation, consider that, in the days following the great Sanders victory in Nevada, the stock market collapsed. It’s about what you would expect from a market facing a Sanders victory.

It’s not just the idiotic policy proposals. It’s not even about whether or not Sanders can win. It’s the simple fact that any country that sees Bernie Sanders as a serious presidential candidate is not a serious country.

Yes, I know that it was all about the coronavirus, but still, consider the fact that the markets have a vote. And that the stock market vote is like a pre-election poll. Investors who think that Bernie can win are less likely to want to keep their money in stocks. As if that were not enough, even if Bernie cannot win, the fact that a major American political party can seriously consider him is a very bad omen.

While you are digesting that, consider the fact that the Biden resurgence in South Carolina, such as it was, produced a massive stock market rally yesterday. Again, this might be all about the coronavirus, but it might also have been about the fact that the senile Biden is going to be an awful presidential candidate, one who is guaranteed to lose to President Trump.

Even if Biden wins, investors might console themselves with the possibility that a doddering, senile old fool can only do a minimum of damage.

If not, there’s always the 25th amendment.