Elder Abuse

In the White House

A couple of weeks ago, on June 14th, Joe Biden issued a presidential proclamation warning about the dangers of “Elder Abuse”.

Source

At the time that seemed amusing, particularly juxtaposed with his antics in Italy the same day when he head butted the pope and then wandered off to chat to a random paratrooper.

While it was just amusing and ironic, I didn’t see Biden’s increasingly senile behavior actually making any difference. I thought the Democrat/Deep State/MSM elites would somehow find a way to get that senile husk over the finish line in November. But I was wrong. Two weeks later Joe Biden managed to show that he is in fact senile on live TV and it wasn’t stopped.

In fact despite the whole format being clearly designed to allow Biden to shine as best he could and to give Trump less of a chance to bamboozle, it failed miserably. The people at the Persuasion substack¹ are representative in their response

What we just witnessed was the collapse of any pretense that Joe Biden can effectively lead the United States through January 2025, let alone January 2029. Seeing the president stumbling incoherently through half-forgotten answers, jumbling his millions and billions and trillions in his now paper-thin, geriatrically-inflected whisper, then staring into space during Trump’s answers with the vacant look of a long-term care-home resident, my overwhelming urge was to protect him, to jump in somehow and rescue him from the grotesque act of elder abuse he was being subjected to.

[...] Trump came across as an older adult with a normal level of cognitive functioning for his age. Biden came across as someone in need of round-the-clock care, able to produce short bursts of relatively coherent political rhetoric before sputtering into foggy incoherence.

and

Within a few moments of the debate ending, there may well be an attempt to spin this again, but it’s just not going to work. Too many Americans saw Biden and his obviously diminished capacities. This is an emergency. He cannot continue to run. The Democrats will lose and the country will suffer greatly from a second Trump term. There is no alternative to stepping down. 

Those thoughts are pretty much representative of every one who watched the debate or highlights. At best you have people saying that Trump² was also rambling and mean, which may be somewhat true, but even so it isn’t much of a defense. Plus (as noted above) Trump, mean or not, came across as basically compos mentis which was a bar Biden managed to limbo stagger under. As Nate Silver points out³ cognitive decline is a thing that we are all becoming increasingly familiar with thanks to our exposure to aging relatives and Biden is clearly well down the slope.

There’s no way to pass this off as cheap fakes/deep fakes/republican’s “pounce” or anything else. If you go look for medical definitions of senile dementia and its progression you get pages like this one which talk about the seven stages of decline:

Stage 3: Mild Cognitive Decline

This is the stage where cognitive impairment starts to become more noticeable to the patient, as well as their friends, family members, and colleagues.

The person may start to show symptoms such as:

• Getting lost while walking or driving, particularly in unfamiliar places

• Reading something and retaining very little of it

• Forgetting the names of people they’ve just met

• Losing items of importance or value

• Having trouble concentrating and performing complex tasks

• Experiencing increasing difficulty in social settings

• Frequently forgetting words and the names of loved ones

• Performing poorly at work, to the extent that it becomes evident to colleagues

And

Stage 6: Severe Cognitive Decline

At this stage, the person may require a high degree of care, as they may have symptoms such as:

• Difficulty remembering the names of their spouse, children, or primary caregivers

• Lack of awareness regarding all the recent events and experiences in their life

• Patchy or skewed recollection of their early life

• Difficulty counting backward or forward to 10

• Lack of awareness regarding their surroundings as well as the time and place

• Inability to travel alone without assistance

• Tendency to wander

From observation Biden is now in 2024 clearly on the second half of the list. In fact he may be all the way down to stage 6. “Tendency to wander” is a symptom of stage 6 that he has repeatedly demonstrated. Sadly some other stage 6 symptoms (e.g. “Patchy or skewed recollection of their early life”) may not be so obviously applicable because Biden has made up anecdotes about his early life for decades. But if you watch the man struggle to get into a vehicle or read the transcripts of his deposition regarding the classified documents he’s definitely showing many of the symptoms of later stage dementia.

There is no way they can BS their way out of this. In fact given the almost universal “he cannot run” comments from never Trumpers, Democrat operatives and party shills on X and elsewhere it would seem reality has hit. In fact this universality about how bad this was almost makes me think this was a set up. Almost.

Conspiracy Theory Time

The conspiracy theory goes like this. Group G within the democrat/deep state axis has been aware from some years that Biden was incompetent but they were unable to replace him because there were (are) too many disparate factions that want different alternative candidates and/or policies. Biden was a useful cypher/puppet that could be controlled as long as you could do your backroom deals and blackmail to get enough of the other factions on your side. But you, as group G, have a possible alternative nominee who would never win an actual primary but who does well in terms of being biddable, coherent and looking like a plausible presidential candidate. So you wait until it is too late to replace Biden using the traditional process, cause him to faceplant in such a way that he has to quit and then shove your candidate to the front as the “not Trump” candidate and panic everyone else into agreeing to select him instead of letting Trump romp home in a landslide.

G may, or may not, be a hint as to who that candidate might be

The problem with this theory is that the electoral calendar is tight enough that the replacement may not be on the ballot in key states like Ohio, where the deadline to file is August 7. That’s about five weeks from now and is two weeks before the Democrat convention where a brokered convention might allow group G’s candidate to be selected.

While I know many democrat/deep staters are stupid and unable to think about secondary consequences, they generally are smart enough to spot obvious flaws like the Ohio one and they have utterly failed to get the Ohio legislature to change its mind and the deadline. I believe there may be several other states where the deadline is also tight, if it hasn’t already passed absent special legislation. This X post extracts key points from a recent Daily Mail article:

Republicans get their day to fight dirty: How conservatives could make it very hard for Democrats to replace Biden on the 2024 ballot if he has a disastrous debate or steps aside.

“The Heritage Oversight project has set their sights on three contentious swing states where they believe taking Biden off the Democratic ticket would not allow anyone else to replace him: Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin.”

“Wisconsin does not allow withdrawal from the ballot for any reason besides death.

In Nevada, no changes can be made to the ballot after 5 p.m. on the fourth Friday in June of an election year or 'a nominee dies or is adjudicated insane or mentally incompetent.' 

If Biden were to withdraw less than 60 days before the election in Georgia, his name will remain on the ballot but no votes will be counted.”

More here

According to Ballotopia, independent candidates have to file by early August in numerous states (and the deadline has already passed in Texas and Illinois for example). What that probably means is that if you haven’t already filed (and you weren’t RFK Jr and on the democratic primary ballot) you may not be a valid candidate in a significant fraction of states unless you mobilize everything correctly in the next month. Illinois being a democrat stronghold they will probably pass a special law, but states where the Republicans control some or all of the legislature and/or the governorship may be less amenable to making changes (see, as mentioned above, Ohio). So umm. The Democrats have a big big problem. They have to replace Biden - in fact they need to get him out of the White House ASAP because fundamental credibility in the Biden presidency is pretty much shattered now. But how>

OK So Who Replaces Biden?

There’s probably only one feasible mechanism - Biden is resigned following the relevant constituional process for an incapacitated president and Commie La Whoreish takes over. She then selects a new VP. One who, AIUI, cannot be from her home state or California so that means Governor Hairgel is SOL.

There would then need to be a palace coup to make her resign and have her VP choose his VP because Commie La Whoreish is so stupid and unlikeable that Trump would beat her like a pinata in a head to head match up. Even with all the frauding there’s no way they can get her to win and have the result look even slightly plausible (and after last night there’s no way they can do that for Senile Joe either, so he has to go).

So who does Commie La Whoreish select? Illinois Gov Pritzker? Hillary? umm…

There are vanishingly few Democrats who are young enough to look OK, smart enough to be able to debate Trump, and well enough known in a positive way that voters will vote for them (or at least enough voters will vote for them that the fraud is plausible).

This is going to be a great time to buy popcorn futures. It is also worth planning for a second Trump presidency. I don’t see this as bad as Noah Smith⁴ does, but I really don’t see how we get a plausible victory by someone else.

1. The Night the Biden Presidency Ended

2. Not knowing your Candidates until the Convention is Positively American

3. Joe Biden should drop out

4. Time to think about a second Trump term