by Gregg Jarrett
When the mainstream media puts down their pom poms and stops cheering for you, it’s pretty obvious you’ve fumbled and failed. That’s what has happened to Joe Biden, the overrated political quarterback who thought he had the skills to lead the nation.
For much of his first year as president, the liberal press cheered Joe on with shouts of “Let’s go, you can do it!” When he didn’t do it, they conjured up another cheer. Over and over again.
Watching Biden fail was like watching the clumsy football player who continues to trip over his own feet and fall flat on his face. Eventually, the media became deflated. They lost their enthusiasm. The cheering stopped. They could hear the cacophony of boos coming from the stands. And pretty soon, they joined in.
NBC’s Chuck Todd opened his Sunday “Meet the Press” show finally conceding the obvious: President Joe Biden is “no longer seen as competent and effective.” Good call, Chuck. Citing Biden’s miserable approval rating, Todd added that Joe is “no longer seen as a good commander-in-chief, or perhaps most damaging, as easy-going and likable.”
A scant 5% say Biden has performed better than expected. Which means that no sane person is buying Joe’s malarky that he has “outperformed what anybody thought would happen.” When he said it during his dumpster-fire news conference, you could almost hear the snickering among the gathered press corps.
Biden has always been delusional about his own abilities. People who are not bright tend to be that way. But Joe’s diminished mental acuity —on full display during his recent news conference— only accentuates the belief that Biden is an inept failure. No amount of cheerleading can save his doomed presidency. Gallup reports that his ratings have tanked by double digits. Just 28% want him to run for reelection, according to an AP poll.
Why such embarrassing numbers across the board? Because in one short year Joe has made a hash of everything and failed to deliver on his many promises. A Politico poll shows that half of Americans give Biden’s presidency a grade of “D” or “F.” Even members of his own party give him poor marks. And 70% of independent voters graded him as average, below average, or failing. Joe was always a lousy student, so at least that’s consistent.
The president’s dwindling supporters claim that his problem is “messaging,” not his sweeping agenda. The truth is…it’s both. Anyone with a pulse knows it. His ideas are bad and people don’t like them. Except for the radical progressives, but they are way outside the American mainstream.
As for his “messaging,” it’s hard to convince people of anything when you’re an abysmal communicator. Use whatever metaphor you want, but Joe’s rambling 2-hour press conference was an epic disaster. Saturday Night Live joked that Biden needed two hours “because that’s how long it took to list everything that’s gone wrong.”
The new conference itself was an exceedingly rare event. Abandoning his usual scripted teleprompter, Joe was hoping to paint himself as a competent leader. He accomplished just the opposite. His cognitive decline was on full display. The long pauses with his eyes closed made you wonder if he’d nodded off in the standing position. Trying to make sense of what he said was a constant challenge. He often lost his train of thought, jumbled his sentences, and wandered from one disjointed subject to another. He was like the Dick Tracy character called “Mumbles.”
Van Jones, the liberal CNN commentator who famously cried on-air while celebrating the moment Joe won the presidency, now has a different view. He described Biden as “foggy and meandering.” Jones even compared him to Ronald Reagan, who may have suffered from the early stages of Alzheimers late in his presidency.
Citing a poll where half of registered voters have doubts about Biden’s mental fitness, a reporter asked the 79-year old president about that. He brushed the question aside by saying, “I have no idea,” and quickly moved on. It was one of his few lucid moments.
When Biden ran for president, he bragged incessantly about his vast experience in foreign affairs. Now, with a force of more than 125,000 Russian troops amassed at the Ukrainian border, Biden all but invited Vladimir Putin to invade. Joe seemed to say that that a “minor incursion” would be perfectly okay, sparking widespread outrage. There was an immediate “clean-up on aisle 3” by White House flacks. They corrected Biden without actually admitting that he’d temporarily lost his mind. But the damage was done.
