Breaking News: New York Times calls for Biden to quit the race
Q: When does the Left have to admit reality? A: When it can no longer be hidden.
This will be short and sweet, but it’s big news and could easily affect the presidential election: The Left’s leading mouthpiece, the New York Times, has called on President Biden to leave the race.
Its editorial is, perforce, chock full of anti-Trump bile, and I’m going to pass on that to the extent possible. You can read the whole thing here. But the acknowledgement of Biden’s critical deficiencies is decently honest, if unavoidable.
Mr. Biden has said that he is the candidate with the best chance of taking on [Trump’s] threat of tyranny and defeating it. His argument rests largely on the fact that he beat Mr. Trump in 2020. That is no longer a sufficient rationale for why Mr. Biden should be the Democratic nominee this year.
At Thursday’s debate, the president needed to convince the American public that he was equal to the formidable demands of the office he is seeking to hold for another term. Voters, however, cannot be expected to ignore what was instead plain to see: Mr. Biden is not the man he was four years ago.
Or even last Christmas, for that matter.
The president appeared on Thursday night as the shadow of a great public servant. He struggled to explain what he would accomplish in a second term. He struggled to respond to Mr. Trump’s provocations. He struggled to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies, his failures and his chilling plans. More than once, he struggled to make it to the end of a sentence.
Having such a person to face off against the mullahs is a prospect that will keep you up at night.
[G]iven [Trump’s] danger, the stakes for the country and the uneven abilities of Mr. Biden, the United States needs a stronger opponent to the presumptive Republican nominee. To make a call for a new Democratic nominee this late in a campaign is a decision not taken lightly, but it reflects the scale and seriousness of Mr. Trump’s challenge to the values and institutions of this country and the inadequacy of Mr. Biden to confront him.
And of this, which the Times can read as well as you can.
Supporters of the president are already explaining away Thursday’s debate as one data point compared with three years of accomplishments. But the president’s performance cannot be written off as a bad night or blamed on a supposed cold, because it affirmed concerns that have been mounting for months or even years. Even when Mr. Biden tried to lay out his policy proposals, he stumbled. It cannot be outweighed by other public appearances because he has limited and carefully controlled his public appearances.
Too bad the Times and the other organs of the Left didn’t have the honesty to admit this before reality forced their hand.
It should be remembered that Mr. Biden challenged Mr. Trump to this verbal duel. He set the rules, and he insisted on a date months earlier than any previous general election debate. He understood that he needed to address longstanding public concerns about his mental acuity and that he needed to do so as soon as possible.
The truth Mr. Biden needs to confront now is that he failed his own test.
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The clearest path for Democrats to defeat a candidate defined by his lies is to deal truthfully with the American public: acknowledge that Mr. Biden can’t continue his race, and create a process to select someone more capable to stand in his place to defeat Mr. Trump in November.
Trump’s deficiencies are serious, as Paul and I having been saying for months, but he’s an adult of no little experience who successfully led the country before. Biden’s deficiencies, as the Times concedes (and soon, I expect, others on the Left will concede as well, albeit grudgingly and late) are disqualifying.
Human beings can overcome many things. Time is not one of them.
Seems like this was the reason for the early debate. His handlers knew he wouldn't make it and set him up to be replaced. I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but there is no way this wasn't the plan.
I’m no big fan of Trump, but what the NYT can’t admit is that on the issues, Trump is vastly superior to Biden. That also was obvious in the debate. The NYT writers retreat into the obvious, Biden’s senility, the condition for which they’ve been providing cover, but Trump also has policy positions clearly more popular than Biden’s. Whether it’s domestic policy or foreign policy, Biden has been a dismal leader, has governed from the woke, far-Left, and every thinking person outside the NYT bubble knows it.