His family should convince him to withdraw from the race, in favor of any other candidate but the useless Kamala Harris. It seems like elder abuse not to do otherwise.
Would an ordinary senior citizen in this condition be forced to maintain a grueling schedule and deal with all the stressful situations he has created? Of course not. That senior citizen would probably be brought to the doctor or hospital for a complete workup.
Even Trump, always himself as usual and never at a loss for words, looked concerned when Biden couldn't even make himself understood.
Here's an assessment from Politico, which tells you everything you need to know about the situation:
All Joe Biden needed to do was deliver a repeat performance of his State of the Union address.
Instead, he stammered. He stumbled. And, with fewer than five months to November, he played straight into Democrats’ worst fears — that he’s fumbling away this election to Donald Trump.
The alarm bells for Democrats started ringing the second Biden started speaking in a haltingly hoarse voice. Minutes into the debate, he struggled to mount an effective defense of the economy on his watch and flubbed the description of key health initiatives he’s made central to his reelection bid, saying “we finally beat Medicare” and incorrectly stating how much his administration lowered the price of insulin. He talked himself into a corner on Afghanistan, bringing up his administration’s botched withdrawal unprompted. He repeatedly mixed up “billion” and “million,” and found himself stuck for long stretches of the 90-minute debate playing defense.
And when he wasn’t speaking, he stood frozen behind his podium, mouth agape, his eyes wide and unblinking for long stretches of time.
“Biden is toast — calling it now,” said Jay Surdukowski, an attorney and Democratic activist from New Hampshire who co-chaired former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s 2016 presidential campaign in the state.
In text messages with POLITICO, Democrats expressed confusion and concern as they watched the first minutes of the event. One former Biden White House and campaign aide called it “terrible,” adding that they have had to ask themselves over and over: “What did he just say? This is crazy.”
“Not good,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) wrote.
POLITICO spoke to about a dozen Democrats, some of whom were granted anonymity to discuss Biden’s performance.
Biden’s team was quick to defend the president’s performance. First they said he had a cold (and that he was negative for Covid-19). Then they insisted Trump was hurting himself by insulting Biden’s presidential record.
Biden did grow stronger throughout the night, at one point seizing on Trump’s reported dismissal of fallen soldiers as “suckers and losers” to skewer the former president as the real “sucker” and “loser.” At others, he hammered Trump’s criminal conviction in New York.
“The only person on this stage who’s a convicted felon is the man I’m looking at right now,” Biden said.
But first impressions matter — particularly to voters just tuning into the election and who were more likely to watch the first debate than the second that’s scheduled for September. And instead of setting the tone of the next phase of the presidential campaign, Biden’s shaky performance reignited fears among Democrats that the octogenarian whose mental acuity and physical fitness have stood as voters’ chief concerns about returning him to the White House might not even be able to carry the party through to November.
“Time for an open convention,” one prominent operative texted.
Biden’s team had tried to engineer the debate in his favor — pushing for it to be early and without an audience. And the president agreed to hold the event in part to calm Democratic nerves over whether he could win in November.
Afterward they didn’t try to cover up his poor performance, but instead tried to emphasize that Trump remained a threat to American interests at home and abroad.
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Read the rest at Politico.
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