With an effort, I wrench my attention from contemplating local fall-out from the Wuhan coronavirus, or as an unknown wit called it the ‘Kung Flu’. The grocery stores we favor are pretty well picked over by mid-day, in spite of closing from 8 PM to 8AM to restock, the gym has closed, gatherings of more than ten are strongly advised against, and just about every local market or book festival that we had considered participating in has been cancelled or postponed until summer or even later – when, presumably, either the medical wizards will have a handle on the Kung Flu, or people will stop panicking over it.

In the meantime, I am diverted by the spectacle of Joe Biden, former VP and presumed Dem party nominee for the 2020 election to the office of President of the USA. I am diverted and appalled in about equal measure because it is screamingly obvious to just about everyone outside the Established National News Media that Joe Biden, who represented his senatorial district for three undistinguished decades … is down to about his last half a marble. Look, if his constituency in Scranton wanted the corrupt, handsy old blow-hard warming a seat in the US Senate for thirty years, it was really no skin off mine. Lord knows, other senatorial districts have, over the years, elected representatives every bit as scummy, corrupt and incompetent – I give you LBJ, for example (and to quote Molly Ivens, you b*stards gave him right back!) who at least was only two out of the three.

But Joe Biden is … something special. As in “short-bus special.” It’s increasingly become obvious that he is, to put it kindly, wandering in his wits. He is going senile before our very eyes; blustering, hair-trigger abusively incoherent, forgetful and sometimes all at once. It’s pitiful, wondering why his family and his staff would put him through all this – and then, yeah; the thought occurs that a) his immediate family – the coke-snorting son, and the rest of the clan have all done very well out of that blood connection, as long as Joe Biden held a high office, and could monetize the connections thereof, and fend off any inconvenient query into their scummy doings by blaming it all on political animosity, and b) the staff who also did very well out of working for an influential pol, never mind if the pol himself could basically be put in a planter in the corner and watered three times a week; Hank Johnson of ‘Guam could turn over’ fame being the prime example. Apparently, Hank Johnson’s official staff is crackerjack, professional, expert, responsible, everything that the primary is not. But their fortunes or continued employment is all vested in the primary, on behalf of whom they work, so I presume that the same is true of Joe Biden’s long-time employees. Because otherwise, they will be out on the street, with their office stuff in a couple of cardboard boxes, wondering where their next comfortable decades-long sinecure is coming from.

So from a combination of these two impulses and likely others that I can barely sense from my perch in far, far suburban Texas – I anticipate that the obediently-progressive minions of the Established National News Media will do their very best to load up Ol’ Gropey Joe, with all his many… many… ethical missteps onto the juggernaut and haul him over the finish line. This will prove to be a spectacle most amusing, watching the highest levels of the Established National News Media tie themselves into knots, insisting that he is the Very Bestest Candidate Imaginable… since he is opposing the fell machinations of the Orange Man Bad.
I wonder how many of them will vomit into the nearest toilet before wiping their lips and going out onto the news set, under the glaring lights and insisting that they must support a Dem candidate who seems to be melting into senility before our eyes. Because he is the chosen Dem candidate. Discuss as you wish.