Democrats should be thanking Robert Hur for providing a Biden escape hatch

Joe Biden will never be younger than he is now. His health isn’t going to get better next year, and his mental acuity isn’t going to get better in a year, much less in four years. Time only moves in one direction and can be unkind.

But the real issue is not his age, but his ability to function. You don’t need a medical degree to know that President Biden is physically and mentally frail. You can tell by the way he walks (slow limp) and the way he speaks (hesitates, like he doesn’t know what he’s trying to say) that he has a problem. You can see it in the way he confuses the president of Egypt with the president of Mexico. He confuses the leaders of France and Germany with previous leaders who died long ago.by a reporter reminding him that Israel is at war with Hamas, not just a nameless “opposition” as Biden says, but a name he doesn’t understand. It seemed like Remember.

But Democrats are outraged by Special Counsel Robert Hur’s case. report The president is now famously described as a “well-intentioned old man with a poor memory,” whose “ability is declining with age.” That’s one reason Mr. Hsu chose not to prosecute Mr. Biden in connection with possession of classified materials.

Left-wing partisans, both inside and outside the media, have criticized Mr. Xu’s comments as outrageous and unjustified.Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post Said They argued that the move was politically motivated and that Mr. Hsu was a “rock-hard Republican” who had repeatedly “denigrated the Republican Party’s campaign.”

But Republicans aren’t the only ones who think Biden is too weak to serve another four years in office. Polls show a majority of Americans think the same. But now New ABC/Ipsos poll The results found that an astonishing 86 percent of Americans think Biden is too old to serve another term, including 73 percent of Democrats and independents. Contains 91%. Getting 86% of Americans to agree on something is a near impossible task. That includes whether you believe Mother’s Day is a good idea.

Democrats may howl, claiming it was a cheap shot by Republican prosecutors, but they know, like almost everyone else, that the president is not well. And if they are truly angry (and not just reflexively defending the party’s nominal leader), their concern is with the American people, not Robert Herr.

Even New York Times columnist David French, who is no fan of Donald Trump (to say the least), is warning Democrats that Joe Biden is in trouble. “I know” he said write, “Biden would be much better than Trump, but I still worry he won’t be up to the challenge of governing for four more years.” “Better than Trump” means… This does not mean that he will continue to respond clearly and energetically to serious challenges at home and abroad. “Better than Trump” doesn’t mean we can expect him to finish his second term. “Better than Trump” doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll beat Trump in November. ”

It’s true that all this talk about Biden’s weakness doesn’t make Joe Biden look good, but rather than denigrate Herr, counterintuitively, it suggests that Democrats should actually be grateful to Joe Biden. Let me suggest it. This new focus on Biden’s mental health could be a tipping point for him (or his wife) to step back and let someone else run against Trump, the likely Republican nominee. What would happen if I convinced him that? If that happens, Biden will be a hero, at least as far as his fellow Democrats are concerned. Because anyone not named Joe Biden would almost certainly have a better chance of winning in November.

And there is also a moderate way for Mr. Biden to withdraw from the race. He could remain in the party through the primaries, releasing delegates to the party’s national convention in August and letting them decide who will run against Trump. He could come off as a benevolent elder statesman who defeated Trump once and helped defeat Trump a second time.

Bette Davis once said that getting older “isn’t effeminate.” So there’s no shame in admitting the obvious. The time has come for Mr. Biden to sit aside and let convention delegates choose a candidate to run against Mr. Trump.

But if the Biden campaign keeps its candidate secret (as it did when he escaped from the basement of his Delaware home in 2020) (no town halls, no Super Bowl interviews, no ad hoc You may be thinking, “I should say as little as possible.” They can win again and hope that Donald Trump will say something stupid enough to defeat them between now and November.

That might work, except for one thing: 86 percent of Americans believe Biden is too old to serve another term, so even Trump might look good by comparison. .

That might be something Joe Biden wants to consider. At stake is a legacy he holds dear.

bernard goldberg He is an Emmy Award-winning and Alfred I. duPont Columbia University Award-winning author and journalist. He was his correspondent for 22 years on HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel,” and previously worked as a reporter for CBS News and an analyst for FOX News. He is the author of his five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries, and Q&As. substack page.follow him @Bernard Goldberg.