The End. Or It Should Be.

Erick-Woods Erickson

The Democratic Party’s Twitter account declared Joe Biden the winner of last night’s debate. They used a picture from 2021. That says everything.

They gave Joe Biden so much rest at Camp David that he didn’t even address the nation after the attacks at the Los Angeles Synagogue, and that was the best performance he could muster after more than a week of rest? He walked out like he was C3PO.

On his deathbed two hours south of Atlanta, Jimmy Carter could have had a more cogent debate performance.

For the last week, the press corps has insisted that Americans were seeing “cheap fakes” and “deep fakes” of selectively edited clips of Joe Biden. Last night, in a live, unedited debate last night, Americans saw they’ve been lied to by the press and Democrats.

As much as Democrats are going to have a conversation about Joe Biden, Americans need to have a conversation about how so much of the American press corps has carried Joe Biden’s water because of their deep hatred of Donald Trump. We’ve been lied to by the press, who lectures Donald Trump about lies.

After a terrible debate performance, Joe Biden went to a post-debate rally in Atlanta, Georgia, and, with more energy shown than at any moment on the debate stage, thanked the people of North Carolina. Yes, he really did that.

Last night, Democrats needed Jamaal Bowman to pull a fire alarm to cut the whole thing short. By the end of the night, the “LIVE” banner for CNN became a metaphor for whether Biden was still ticking.

Put frankly, if democracy really is at stake, after last night, Democrats must put a stake through the heart of the Biden campaign.

More frankly, Joe Biden legally controls his delegates. They are bound to him, and only he can release them. He has a big chip on his shoulder and truly believes he deserves the presidency. You probably do not appreciate this. However, Biden thinks he earned this despite many naysayers and has internalized that Democrats keep trying to push him aside. He resents the talk and is stubborn about it.

If Joe Biden does not want to step aside, there is no mechanism for Democrats to force him aside at this point.

The odds are very good that Biden will attempt to use the Supreme Court’s United States v. Trump decision, probably out on Monday, to change the subject and move it back to an attack on Trump. He’ll hope for distraction and convince himself he has time.

On top of that, the man is the father of two drug addicts who abandoned his young sons after their mother was killed so Joe could play Senator in Washington. His favorite son died. His surviving son turned the dead son’s widow into a crack addict. Joe’s wife plays doctor teacher. This is not a functional family capable of sitting down and saying, “Dad/Dear, retire.”

Barack Obama himself privately described the Biden family dynamic as “weird shit.” So, who can have a frank conversation other than Obama himself?

And bluntly, if Biden does step aside, the Democrats are going to have to oust Kamala Harris, the first black female Vice President of the United States, at a time when they need black women. Harris is more unpopular than Biden.

So the Democrats would have to take an open convention to Chicago surrounded by a Socialist mayor who will sympathize with the Hamasnik protestors out to cause chaos.

And they say Trump’s return to office would be chaos.

The Democrats did this to themselves. They and their friends in the press have consistently and repeatedly lied about Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities. Last night, Biden’s team tried to spin it as a “cold,” which they’d told no one beforehand. Their spin was a lie. Biden is too old.

And this is part of the problem.

Joe Biden’s campaign team is matched in their arrogance only with their incompetence.

They came up with the networks for a debate. They came up with the rules for the debate. They wanted the debate to put to rest the notions of Joe’s competence. And they blew it.

Not only did they blow it, but they also sequestered Joe Biden away at Camp David for a week, got him a head cold, and did not even get him to remember a compelling closing statement.

But they’ll always have the State of the Union.

Their incompetence, for all the world to see, is remarkable. This will go down as one of the worst executed moves in presidential campaign history, but we now know why there were so many jump cuts.

The alternatives are not real starters.

Who would they go with? Gavin Newsom? Even Democrat governors privately think he is, well, I should not write it here. They don’t like him. He is too progressive.

Harris, as I mentioned, is deeply unpopular.

They have the Governor of Kentucky, who can reliably win a red state, but he is untested. Currently, no one has a campaign apparatus unless they resurrect Hillary Clinton.

The Democrats did this to themselves by circling the wagons around Joe Biden. And now they are in panic mode. Even MSNBC went into panic last night. It was brutal and hilarious to watch.

And Trump could capitalize on a switch

“My fellow Americans, the Democrats are in abject panic about Joe Biden and demanding a new candidate. They are not insisting on a new candidate because of Laken Riley’s murder. They are not insisting on a new candidate because of Jocelyn Nungaray’s murder. They are not insisting on a new candidate because 8 men tied to ISIS have been arrested. They are insisting on a new candidate because they think Joe Biden is going to lose to me and know I will close the border. They want open borders and more dead Americans. I want mass deportations and safe Americans.”

The truth about the actual debate is that neither man did well.

Trump’s mistake was not knowing when he’d already won, which hurt him. He owned Biden in the first thirty minutes but repeatedly repeated, “He’s the worst, and I’m the best.”

Forget your perspective as a Trump fan. He still needs to lock in the undecided voters who might be on the verge of getting a taste of a shiny new candidate on the other side. Think about them. Trump had an opportunity to speak more about the future, but he kept relitigating the past and arguing over insults. He outshined Biden, but that’s like a living person running faster than a cadaver.

Trump did great on the border and Israel and also pushed back on the Charlottesville nonsense. He really did great there. But he couldn’t let stuff go that he should have.

Compared to Biden, Trump won. Trump delivered the two most memorable moments of the night, and they were the two moments that defined Joe Biden for the American public.

There was this one.

And then there was this one.

Trump capitalized on both moments with memorable lines. Within thirty minutes, it was over for Biden.

And then there was one more significant moment. Joe Biden claimed no soldiers have died on his watch. Thirteen died in Afghanistan. That Biden could not remember that will be and deserves to be a campaign attack ad.

Panic has now set in for Democrats. Good.

Also, you can shut up about the lies.

I know the press won’t shut up about Donald Trump’s lies. Good grief. CNN, MSNBC, etc. were all having vapors over Donald Trump lying on stage. So too was Joe Biden. But not a single one of them cared.

What’s so notable is that so many reporters got the vapors over Donald Trump’s lies and these same reporters have now, for three years, been lying to the public about Joe Biden’s fitness for office.

At this point, there’s only one bit of spin consoling Democrats.

David Axelrod, gloomy after the debate last night, said something that made my ears perk up. Axelrod thinks Biden’s debate performance was devastating. He also thinks Trump had a weak performance. He said that Trump’s performance would not hold up against another Democratic candidate.

And there you have it—the wish. The Democrats will console themselves with the idea that Trump is vulnerable to another candidate and just wait. He’ll lose to some hypothetical Democrat.

But they have to get Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to step aside, and they do not have to go at all, nor does Harris have to go quietly.

So many hacks have been exposed in all of this.

Watch the video above. Think of all the Democrats who insisted that Joe Biden is a genius in private. For a media that obsesses about Trump’s lies, the whole cast and crew at MSNBC have insisted Joe Biden is brilliant. For all the media obessions with Trump lies, they have lied to us about Joe Biden repeatedly. The Emperor has no clothes. We all saw it. We’ve all been played. So why should anyone believe the press anymore.

The national press corps decided to protect Joe Biden. They circled the wagons. They refused to ask tough questions. They wanted to stop Trump by going easy on Biden. Their failure to do their job honestly and ethically has now brought Trump to the verge of victory.

Also, remember it was not just Democrats but other media institutions (looking at you, MSNBC) that attacked the Wall Street Journal report a few weeks ago about Biden’s decline. The Wall Street Journal and its reporters are owed apologies.

This wasn’t the plan.

I have said and maintained that this was not the plan. Some think this was set up to push Biden out of the race. No. As I have said, this was set up to move beyond the “he’s too old” narrative once and for all and give enough time for damage control if something happened. It was incompetence from Biden’s campaign team.

As I said, though it was not the plan, the reality would be that calls would grow for Biden to step aside if he failed last night.

Many Democrats are calling Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer to beg them to talk to Joe and Jill Biden. Panic has set in.

Joe Biden chose the network to host the debate.

Joe Biden chose the rules for the debate.

And Joe Biden lost the debate.

His new campaign theme needs to be “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”

And don’t forget this.

A whole lot of you were skeptical of CNN’s ability to conduct a fair debate. Jake Tapper and Dana Bash did an outstanding job. Republicans are complaining that they kept stepping in to save Joe Biden. Actually, they were following the clock rules that Joe Biden set.

Ironically, the clock rules Biden insisted on were designed to hurt Trump. Instead, they mitigated Biden’s problems. But they also exposed him. A key moment was when Biden, struggling with black voters, was asked to explain how he’d improve their lives. He used so little time the moderators had to ask him if he had more to say on the subject. Brutal.

Joe Biden ended his night at a post-debate party where the crowd cheered him, he cheered the crowd, then he thanked North Carolina, forgetting he was in Georgia.

CNN did a very good job. They were winners. The nation, however, lost. And Democrats? Well, they’ve borrowed Sam Alito’s upside down American flag.

Can we have them settle this with a golf match?