RUTHFULLY YOURS

The specter of Americans voting for an open socialist is frightening. We’re way past 1972, when Americans rejected a hard-left candidate. Since then, leftists acquired a stranglehold on education, creating a generation of young people who think socialism is cool. Bernie could have won.

Bernie’s probable departure shouldn’t cause us to ignore that Joe Biden is a terrible candidate. He’s usually wrong, famously dishonest, almost as hard-left now in his policies as Bernie himself, corrupt, and showing signs of severe mental degradation.

(Regarding the incipient senility, Dorothy Parker’s cruel question when the famously taciturn Calvin Coolidge died comes to mind: “How can they tell?” The same can be said of Joe’s mental decay.)

With almost 50 years in office, there’s a laundry list of “awfuls” attached to Biden: Borking the esteemed Robert Bork, plagiarism, leading the hi-tech lynching against Clarence Thomas, crafting the 1994 crime law that warehoused generations of black men in American prisons, leading the intemperate pullout from Iraq that led to ISIS, and helping credit card companies ride roughshod over Americans all spring to mind.

Kyle Smith has an excellent run-down of some other painful and dirty Biden moments:

Even at his best, Biden was notorious for being loopy, digressive, and sloppy, and he’s long past his best. Clarence Thomas noted of Biden’s line of questioning during his Senate confirmation hearings, “You have to sit there and look attentively at people [who] you know have no idea what they are talking about.” His bizarre 2012 debate with Paul Ryan consisted of bursts of strangely out-of-context laughter and boorish interruptions. His own aides panic every time he goes off-script, to such a degree that David Axelrod once quipped that Biden was being kept in a “candidate-protection program.” When he starts riffing, he is given to making false claims such as that he was arrested trying to visit Nelson Mandela in prison. His answer to all questions in debate is a subject, a verb, and Obama.

Moreover, Biden looks moderate only in the context of the insanity that is gripping the Democratic Party, only by comparison to wackadoodles such as Warren and Sanders. He has so far escaped scrutiny for the implications of his policy proposals, such as a “public option” for health insurance that would inevitably destroy the private insurance market. He was specifically asked whether this could happen by the New York Times and replied, “Bingo. . . . Sure they would.” He blithely said that when employer-based private health insurance dies out, people could simply go on “the Biden plan.” His health-care policy is just a slo-mo version of Sanders’s and Warren’s policy. He has called for massive tax hikes, offered public health care for illegal immigrants, said such immigrants should not be deported if they’re convicted of drunk driving, and endorsed the $93 trillion boondoggle known as the Green New Deal.

Tucker Carlson documents that Joe is willing to prostitute himself to Democrat Party extremists if it means finally winning the White House:

And then there’s Biden’s corruption. Yes, he didn’t enrich himself personally, but he used his political connections to set up crooked deals that sent millions of dollars to his family members. Had Trump done that, he would have been kicked out of office to universal approval.

Lastly, even honest left-of-center journalists are noting that, of late, Biden isn’t just being stupid, he’s decompensating:

Glenn Reynolds made an astute comment about Joe’s appearance, which is familiar to all of us who have seen our loved ones fade away:

I’ve also noticed a change in the way he looks. Just a few months ago I was thinking he looked pretty good for a guy his age. Lately I’ve noticed his head is developing that skull-like look you see in the old and the sick.

In addition to talking about Biden’s willingness to sell himself to the highest leftist bidder, Tucker Carlson has shown a short montage with just a few of Biden’s most recent departures from reality (beginning at 1:30):

The Democrats know exactly how bad Biden is. That means we need to keep a close eye on his running mate because there’s a decent chance that, if the Democrat establishment gets Biden into office, it will then use his declining mental state as a way to get him out of office (the 25^th Amendment), leaving his Veep as the new (and, for Democrats, real) President.