About last night...

The mendacity of the media with regard to Biden's fitness for office was revealed last night, for all to plainly see. Now what?

A recent exchange with a friend on Meta concerning the debate:

Mark: “Are you going to watch the debate?"

Me: "I'd much rather watch professional wrestling. I'd see a much more honest display of skill and integrity."

So no, I was not tuned into last night’s debate when it started. I had a guitar in my lap, sheet music on a stand, and the Reds vs. Cardinals on TV. My kids were happily playing with their new stuffies on the living room floor. There was a pleasantly cool breeze blowing through the windows. It was a great summer evening and there are not enough of those in anyone’s life. So why in the world would I waste precious time that I can’t get back on watching two schmucks go after each other in a scripted event hosted by a bad news network?

But, as it happens, the Reds went on a rare (as of late) offensive tear, the bossa-nova piece was easier to learn than I thought, and the kids decided to go watch some scary movie back in one of their bedrooms. With all excuses and restraints removed, the political observer in me couldn’t resist. Even though I cursed my weakness as I reached for the remote, I punched 202 into the DirecTV receiver and settled back for the wrasslin’ match.

Apropos of nothing? I think not. I saw it, but I almost still don’t believe it.

From my X and Substack Notes stream of consciousness posts during the debate:

• “A man’s got to know his limitations.” -Kamala Harris

• “My case rests.” -Robert Hur

• “That loud whooshing sound that you may be hearing outside isn’t a tornado; it’s the collective gasp of every Democrat tuned into CNN.”

My first impression of the debate was what a terrible look it was for America. Two disgraceful old fools, one in obvious mental decline and the other an obvious buffoon, were both vying to be the president of the most powerful nation on earth by arguing about golf handicaps. It was just embarrassing. Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping must have been in stitches.

The debate was a damning repudiation of both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party for their absolute incompetence. Both parties have only one job: to find and promote candidates who will rally voters to their respective banners with at least a modicum of competence and avoid candidates who drive voters away in droves. There are 340 million people in this country. That’s probably a minimum of 100 million available each way. How hard can it be?

Yeah, I know; now I’m just being plumb silly.

The debate was also a repudiation of much of the mainstream media, which have, for years, perpetuated the myth that good old Scranton Joe was a lovable, if a bit gaffe-prone, venerable Democratic politician. According to the media spin concerning his obvious age-related issues, your lying eyes were deceiving you. Biden was actually a spritely octogenarian, so full of vim and vigor that he did handstands while zealously defending democracy from insurrectionists (when not falling off his bicycle, that is). If you disagreed with this analysis, based on things that you could clearly see with your own eyes, you were MAGA, an ageist, or a clueless dolt under the mendacious thrall of cheap fakes.

So why would Biden’s team, who knew the truth, send him into the breach? I’m pretty sure it’s because they thought that they could get away with it again. It worked, after all, just a few short months ago during the SOTU address. The bar for success in the March State of the Union was so low that Biden, even with evident diminished capacity, managed to clear it. That was a win, albeit untethered from all but the lowest expectations.

But the danger lurking around those minimal expectations went either unnoticed or unheeded by the Biden camp. The thing about disconnecting cause from effect is that everything works until it doesn’t. Like last night.

Today, the same media, who’ve previously talked up cheap fakes and other nonsense to defend Biden, are twisting themselves into pretzels to explain what we all clearly and unmistakably saw last night. Cold, eh? Based on the Biden rally I saw this morning, it must have been the most rapid recovery from a viral infection in history. What’d he take, echinacea? The New York Times, Associated Press, the Washington Post, CNN, and many others have, as recently as this week, run prominent stories praising Biden’s physical prowess and mental acuity, going through videos frame by frame to explain why they didn’t show what they plainly did, and slamming critics as lowlifes.

None of that is aging well. But the same media is, if nothing else, persistent. It’s just a matter of time until we get headlines about 50 prominent geriatric physicians weighing in with a statement regarding Biden’s complete fitness for office. Oh, and the debate had all of the hallmarks of Russian disinformation.

Watching pundits on CNN and MSNBC defenestrate Biden while acting as if they are operating on long-held conviction has provided a morning full of levity. But it’s just another brick in the wall when it comes to why no one beyond a circle of acolytes trusts them anymore. Almost everyone in America knows the truth about both of the presumptive candidates, media prevarication notwithstanding. Today’s attempts by the usual suspects on the left to act as if the last eight years of gaslighting didn’t exist aren’t fooling anyone who matters.

Reality, it seems, has finally caught up with the left and their media allies. It was bound to occur sooner or later. At some point, it doesn’t matter how much bullshit one is willing to accept to prop up a comforting point of view. The real world matters. If you wander out into the road in front of a moving truck, Newton’s 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Laws of Motion are much more relevant to what happens next than your ideological schemata. That was Biden world last night, with Trump as the 18-wheeler.

So what’s next? Hell if I know. In a rational world, the Democrats would be figuring out how to replace Biden with someone likely to beat Trump in November. But in a rational world, the Democrats wouldn’t have already run off people like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema who could pull it off. Remembering the Access Hollywood tapes, I’m not going to suggest that we put a fork in the race yet either. A lot can still happen. But right now, if I were a betting man, I’d put my entire pile of cash on the orange phenom in the right corner.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth, on Facebook at facebook.com/martin.hackworth, and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com.