Everybody knows that Joe Biden isn’t really there. His denials of ill-health are in fact a symptom of it — he clings angrily to his delusions because that is what people do when their minds go. And since he seems so immovable, the question is whether Democrats can somehow buy into Biden’s alternate reality again in time for 2024. Can the party re-delude itself into thinking that he is somehow reversing the aging process, even if that makes them look and sound ever more ridiculous?
What we’re seeing is the increasingly disembodied Artificial Biden who will fight the rest of this campaign
And the answer is: yes, they can! We are now moving into a new age of AB — Artificial Biden. The old RB (Real Biden) may be struggling to keep it together, yet AB came out yesterday all guns blazing. He wrote a long letter — to prove he can still communicate at length — to his fellow Democrats and called on his doubters to shut up. “The question of how to move forward has been well-aired for over a week now,” he wrote. “And it’s time for it to end.” He’s the only man to beat Donald Trump, he added, again, as he prattled through his achievements in office.
He also called in to MSNBC’s Morning Joe, his favorite TV show, to tell the sycophantic hosts, Joe and Mika, that he wasn’t going anywhere. He laid down the gauntlet to any would-be challengers — even as he said there could be no challenges to his leadership. “If any of these guys don’t think I should run, run against me — announce for president, challenge.” But, as Biden says, he’s already won the Democratic primary — and if he refuses to go, with all his delegates, who can stop him being nominated at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month?
He didn’t appear by video — perhaps to add to the fraudulent sense of youthful spontaneity: the president is on the line et cetera, et cetera. But not appearing on screen also meant we didn’t have to see his glazed eyes and all too familiar frozen glares. It also meant, presumably, he could read off notes without anyone seeing.
Sure enough, many in the Democratic press corps gave Biden’s performance rave reviews. He was back out “on offense,” they purred. Various analysts chimed in by saying that this was the Biden that voters wanted to see.
How stupid do these people think other people are? What we’re seeing is the increasingly disembodied Artificial Biden who will fight the rest of this campaign. He writes tweets, he writes letters, he makes private calls and holds lots of audiences with loyalists who will then swear blind that he’s a-OK.
He will appear in public, too, but these moments will be more and more tightly managed. Through the use of teleprompters, make-up and careful stage directions, you might convince yourself he’s alright. And does it really matter if he isn’t real? In our strange post-truth age, Team Biden is betting that it won’t. Democrats will effectively be voting for a post-human idea of a president, who is still alive and well in cyberspace and the airwaves. Try to forget all the sci-fi you’ve read about the dystopian autocracies of the future. Artificial Biden is your friend!
The Democrats, terrified at the thought of another Trump term, might just persuade themselves to airbrush the Real Biden from their minds. The wider American public, however, will not be so easily convinced.
This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.
