A Resurgent Trump Heightens Democrats’ Fears Over the Re-Election Prospects for Biden, Their ‘Human Gaffe Machine’

by Conrad Black

The surprising element in the special prosecutor’s reflections on President Biden’s mental faculties was not the content of them, which has been perceptible for years in a politician who in his prime jokingly referred to himself as a “human gaffe machine.” Technically, the president and his supporters are correct that while this state of affairs sharply reduces Mr. Biden’s forensic and debating talents, sharply restricts his exposure to the press, and makes it difficult even for him to manage a teleprompter, there is no evidence that it materially affects his judgment.

It seems to be clear from polls that the country considers that Mr. Biden’s judgment is unsound also and that fact, and not his declining articulation, explains an unsatisfactory economic performance, an unsustainable hemorrhage on the southern border, skyrocketing urban crime, the insane and authoritarian green obsession, the Afghan debacle, and the absence of any plausible end-game strategy in Ukraine.

The most disturbing utterance in the president’s comments on Thursday night was that he actually apparently believes that he “put the country back on its feet.” If the criteria for that assertion could be established, there might be grounds for seriously questioning if the president’s mental state were adequate to execute his office. There is a body of partisan Democratic opinion much in evidence in the press that holds that, as Fareed Zakaria said to him in an interview approximately six weeks ago, Mr. Biden has been “perhaps a great president,” but might it not be time to consider retiring?

This was the gentle and dignified exit offered to the president by the powers that be in his party and its press entourage, and it appeared that among the tactics being employed to encourage him in this direction was the gradual torquing up of Hunter Biden’s problems by the Justice Department, normally docile to the regime while it pursues the 45th president like a rabid animal.

This still appears to be the pressure point of the Democratic kingmakers, as the controversial report of the special counsel examining the president’s handling of confidential documents probably could not have been composed as it was and certainly could not have been published as it was without the approval of the attorney general, Merrick Garland, who has been the policeman at the crossroads throughout this prolonged pseudo-legal whitewashing of the regime, up to last week, and meticulous slathering of the former president.

It has been evident that the struggle over the renomination of Mr. Biden has been underway for some time. It is like dogs fighting under a blanket — it is impossible to judge who is winning but it is clear that the contest is in progress.

As one of those who has said for many months that the Democrats could not renominate the incumbent president and vice president, I’m somewhat impressed by Mr. Biden’s tenacity. Though throughout his public career, he has simultaneously had a propensity for glaring blunders, the almost unbroken habit, as the former Defense secretary, Robert Gates, remarked, of choosing the wrong strategic option, but of implacably considering himself to be in all circumstances the smartest man in the room. However he regards himself, the informal central committee of the Democrats knows that they made a grievous error in 2020 choosing a figurehead president and putting him on top of the Sanders socialist program.

They have contented themselves until recently that it did not matter how inept and unprepossessing Mr. Biden was, they could always beat Mr. Trump. By the time this proposition became wobbly, they were ready with what Peter Strzok told Lisa Page in 2016 was their ultimate assurance of being able to stop Mr. Trump: a spurious indictment, and as it has emerged, a plethora of such outrageous perversions of the criminal justice system, though it is unlikely that most of them will get to trial before — and maybe even after — the election.

It now seems to be fairly clear that more Americans are horrified by this assault upon constitutional democracy through the partisan co-option of the prosecution service than are opposed to the reelection of Mr. Trump. The majority of Americans remember that they themselves and the country were in better condition when he was president, and a large number of Americans are concerned by the allegations of harvested and unverifiable mail-in ballots in the last presidential election. Their concern is exacerbated by the refusal of the judiciary to hear on the merits the constitutional issues in 2020, and the refusal of the national political press to refer to Republican election concerns as anything other than “lies.”

This is not working and the average of the polls shows Mr. Trump with a two percent overall popular vote lead on Mr. Biden. Since most of the polls are conducted by the left-wing press and universities, they normally underestimate the Trump vote by two percent or three percent which would give him a popular vote lead of approximately 6 million.

If the Democratic majorities in California, New York, and Illinois, are compared to the likely Trump leads in Texas, Florida, Ohio, Missouri, and Tennessee, with approximately equal electoral vote totals from the two groups of states, that leaves Trump with a popular vote lead of approximately ten million in the remaining 42 states.

Even though Democratic governors in several of the swing states (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin) have vetoed Republican legislatures’ efforts to restore a better vote-counting system, and the Republicans have undoubtedly raised their game in countering these tactics, the Democrats are unlikely to be able to harvest their way to victory through a ten million vote deficit.

There is little doubt that a returning Donald Trump would have a much greater knowledge of and motivation for draining the swamp than he did in his first term. If the Democrats were facing another Bush-McCain-Romney Republican, they would be relatively relaxed. They seem now in full panic mode and determined to add to their playbook of absurd indictments of their opponent and monumental vote rigging, new-look candidates. The Democrats deserve full marks for improvisation and political chicanery, but their lack of ethics is a threat to the constitutional republic, and their policy errors are a menace to international peace.

The beach-dweller glibness of the governor of the failed state of California would put the case much more fluently than Mr. Biden can, and the party elders are clearly showing him about as an alternative with a view to making a dramatic change at the convention and giving him Gretchen Whitmer or Michelle Obama as a running mate.

They should not imagine that the country will so soon forget either the unprecedented shamelessness of the Democrats’ assault on the constitutional system or the Gong Show of comprehensive misgovernment of this term. The majority of Americans know that Mr. Trump was a competent president and almost half of them think he was cheated of the office. Trump-hate trimmed with the window-dressing of phony indictments should not be counted upon to keep this unworthy claque of decayed servitors in office.

First published in the New York Sun.