By Ramin Mazaheri for the Saker Blog
US pundits may adore the presidential debates, but political scientists have concluded that “…when it comes to shifting enough votes to decide the outcome of the election, presidential debates have rarely, if ever, mattered.”
That’s absolutely not the case in 2020 – politics is not at all a “science”, of course.
The most important issue in the US today is, incredibly, largely banned from corporate media discourse: Has Joe Biden become too senile to be president?
This is the first topic anyone brings up whenever I ask them about Biden, proving that the intelligence of the average American is too often unfairly denigrated: it should indeed be unthinkable to vote for someone who has been unfortunately beset by old-age dementia. The nation’s highest office cannot be held by someone who can be easily manipulated or who needs to be told what to do.
Despite the fact that everyone here is taking about Biden’s mental health, the MSM and 1% is trying to make it seem like this is just another Russian disinformation campaign.
The denizens of “the Swamp” have controversially insisted for four years that Trump was “unfit for office” – ironically, the 2020 debates will be so unprecedentedly critical because they could shockingly prove that their own candidate is indisputably unfit.
Biden certainly shows very worrying signs of having aged out of civil service. It’s well-known that he has to overcome a regular stutter, but Democrat partisans foolishly believe that the average voter can’t tell the difference between a stammer and serious cognitive decline.
At the Democratic National Convention everyone watched Biden’s speech with baited breath – not because he is such an inspiring candidate but because many expected a mental car crash due to his rumoured senility. I thought his speech was delivered in an incredibly grim manner – he was obviously concentrating like mad just to correctly read the teleprompter, which necessarily excluded the space for inspiration and emotion.
The very first note relayed by CNN’s anchor after the speech reflected the dementia concerns – relief that Biden had only one “senior moment”. Viewers were then instructed that this is what constitutes success for a presidential candidate.
The worries over cognitive decline explain why people are not expecting Biden to win the debates, per recent polls. Many expect Trump to run over him. “Victory” for Biden will thus be the same as his convention speech – avoid “senior moments” which would undeniably disqualify him.
One cannot understate how this very uninspirational candidate is contributing to the incredible, deadly, ever-more shocking malaise in the US this year. Biden has been unsuccessfully running for the presidency since 1988 – why would Americans look forward to the next four years with the long-unwanted and now possibly senile Biden?
What also cannot be understated is how appalling it is that the leading US presidential candidate has been so very absent from the public eye, and for so very long, and despite so many legitimate questions about possible dementia. Sequestering Biden is a dangerous game, and not only because isolation has had such a negative effect on countless seniors during this pandemic: Should Biden get elected and we see his senility increase, how can Americans not react with more political alienation and apathy towards a chattering class which would have to be found guilty of covering for Biden?
The debates are going to have such a record impact because it’s the only chance Americans will have to answer urgent and well-founded questions about a “Hiden’ Biden” who has not been intellectually tested in months.
But how can it be that in the so-called “leader of the free world” voters only get to see their future leader three times?
Americans are essentially being told that they should accept the private decision of the political elite which surrounds Biden that he is indeed intellectually capable of being president – this is not “direct democracy” but “indirect democracy”, and a most curious one. “Indirect democracy with American characteristics” not only isn’t exportable, it’s not even a model Americans themselves want.
Pity the poor American: they have fair questions about their leading presidential candidate, but his privileges are so extraordinary that he doesn’t have to deign to respond. Europeans can sympathise, as there is a clear parallel here with the refusal to heed their repeated rejections of right-wing austerity imposed by Brussels.
Some Americans claim that Trump shows the decline of the American and Western model, but could he really be worse than the daily spectacle of a senile president for four years?
No wonder the US is in chaos during this “summer of fear”- the future proposed by their political and intellectual elite looks dangerously feeble.
Ramin Mazaheri is currently covering the US elections. He is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. He is the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’, which is also available in simplified and traditional Chinese.
I don’t see the problem, it worked fine with Reagan.
Ananymouse
Reagan, the “B” actor, is not the only case. You had little George Bush, who as a student was occasionally seen at university, with people wondering if he read a single book while there. Then you had Barack Obama, who ostensibly was born in Hawaii and ostensibly enrolled at the State University of Hawaii, with former students stating that they never saw him there. The President of the United States is basically an actor, doing as told by the elite.Any disobedience and we all know what happens, as experienced by JFK. Historians are not sure how many US presidents were really assassinated.
Trump verses Biden is capitalism’s joke upon itself. Biden is the perfect candidate to embody the cognitive terminal decline of patriarchal capitalism. Whereas Trump embodies its rapacious insanity. Democracy has nothing to do with it. This all smells like ancient Rome to me.
Wow!
Great post.
Sums up the state of things accurately and concisely.
You can’t go trying to claim Voter’s Remorse if you voted without actually seeing the product beforehand. This isn’t Amazon.
And with Amazon you can return the item if not pleased and be reimbursed… ;-) with Biden you’d just be screwed.
I said in January it was Trump’s race to lose. Then came COVID, and incredibly Trump proceeded to perform so badly as to be losing the race. It was clear by summer that the Democrats would have to work very hard to give the election to Trump. And then they chose Biden, which does all the heavy lifting of losing the race for them.
The Democrats, as many have long suspected, would prefer to remain in #2 position. They all get rich from their seat on the Hill, complete with their legalized insider trading and their corporate sponsorships. They have a great gig in second position, because they don’t have to deal with any of the problems of the country, they can simply blame Trump for everything and say that they are powerless.
In this way, all the while as they increase their personal wealth, they need never explain to their traditional base why they themselves no longer support the traditional Democrat platform, but are as corporation-centric as the Republicans.
What the national polity needs is a serious new party with a movement for the disenfranchised and the disillusioned to join. Such a thing may possibly already be forming with the Peoples Party. Hard to say what may exist by 2024.
“Then came COVID, and incredibly Trump proceeded to perform so badly…”
I am asking this question of everyone I can, and have yet to receive a meaningful answer. What did Trump do with respect to Covid-19 that constitutes mismanagement? That only actions he took were to ban admission to incoming people, and to invoke the NDAA. He sent hospital ships to New York and LA in response to panic cries from governors that their hospitals were being overwhelmed. (The ships were, of course, not used.)
He did not order one single school or business to be closed. He quite rightly said that that was up to the states to decide, and it was state governors who destroyed our economy. He did not issue a single “stay at home” order or order the wearing of masks, saying quite correctly that such matters were the province of state governments. So, and this question is not rhetorical, I really want to know the basis of your statement, what did Trump do that causes you to say that “Trump performed so badly?”
Bill H
Noticing that tRump did not issue those orders and left the decisions to local governments is rayzist and only the patriarchy and white supremacists notice such things.
I suggest you report to a reeducation camp asap.
On the other hand🤔 i am also curious about what mental gymnastics i need to go trough to be able to blame the corona lockdowns etc on tRump, so perhaps we will meet at the check in to one of st hillarys happy camps😂
Ramin, are you still here in the USA wondering what to make of our present political craziness? It’s all Kabuki theater, Ramin, all for show. Only the dim-witted believe that choosing between Trump and Biden means anything at this point, or that we will even have an election in November. It’s not a contest between a senile old fool and a psychopath, it’s whomever the Zionist “powers that be” decide will be president next year.
My guess it will be Trump. He’s already said that he won’t abide by the results of the election and has turned the USA into a seething caldron of unrest and dissension. It’s like Germany in 1933 all over again. And, you know what’s going to happen next, don’t you Ramin?
If presidents are just figureheads who take their orders from the deep state (likely), then does it really matter if the official president is senile?
Biden cannot be trusted with the remote control for his own television never mind the future of mankind.
He plays the game well, behind the eight ball most of the time.
Biden has been missing. I have to say, though, that American presidential campaigns last too long; they should be shorter.
The upcoming American presidential debates should be more entertaining than nude jello wrestling between two morbidly obese fat guys–only not quite as dignified.
Grab your popcorn with extra butter and salt, as you will be an audience to one the most hilarious shitshows in USA history–even by America’s low standards.
It will be comedy gold.
Here’s a preview of the presidential debates:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTOdMq-opQA&t=28s
It’s Must See TV!
If Biden wins – and he was put up specifically because he is guaranteed to not win against the Wall Street military industrial complex capitalist warmonger lobby and the zionist lobby candidate Trump – he will stand down for “health reasons” immediately on assuming office, and be replaced by someone more marketable, Kamala Harris or any other corporate mask.
Loco vs Senilo – Le Match!
Bwahahahahahahaha.
I needed that laugh. Thanks!
As stated in the article above to vote for Joe would be paramount to more abuse on the ederly while a vote for Donald would be abuse on someone intellectually disadvantaged. Both are cruel and something you would not visit upon an insensible individual in a small town election let alone a national one. My short video of visuals tries to cover the possibilities without actually commenting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2huB-P2YC4
or here
http://www.cowdisley.com/videos/joedonald.mp4
There won’t be a debate, you can count it. The Democrats will come up with some nonsense about Biden not wanting to catch the “killer” Covid-19 (that one needs to be tested to know they have it) or even claiming he caught, then by magic he recovers a few days before election. What ever the case. No debate.
I regret that Ramin, long one of my favorite writers, is spending so much time on the minutiae of puppet A versus puppet B. It is like a distraction from the real processes and movers in the world and in the West. He is becoming like b of MoA, though he will never reach that level.
Bravo for this remark! The real power struggles in Iran,China and Russia are about real issues and real choices that are actually made and carried out. While those in Britain , Sweden and especially in the United States of North A are about nothing and nothing gets changed. Concentrate on the formentioned three and not on those laggardly last.
On the 19th Anniversary …………Disappointing!
Not Ramin’s article about debates, which SHOULD be made available to the people.
But, for the most part, the comments…………. a bunch or ridiculously impotent and incompetent remarks, from both self-loathing Americans………. and America Loathing Foreigners!
At least Ramin, in spirit lives more in the Subjunctive Case than the Dead Indicative that afflicts so many!
I addressed the “case” of this problem elsewhere…..in the Vineyard………. this 9/11 Anniversary Morning:
/evidence-the-u-s-is-a-dictatorship-not-a-democracy/#comment-851299
You think the Deep State can risk a debate between Sleepy Joe and Trump????
The Donald is not as corrupt and cowardly nor idiotic as many of you have been trolled into believing. What he is up against took well over a century to cement against ANY change from ANY “outsider”. And as long as he is still standing..4 years later……he can yet “Drain the Swamp”…in a second although many of you don’t even want that!
For many,many people, more endorphins are to be gained by complaining than helping drain it in any way, shape or form.
But back to the debate issue:
Just recall that Orange Man destroyed Hitlery, last Presidential Debate Season with just these 5 words:
“Because you’d be in JAIL.”
Poor Anderson “CIA” Cooper! He didn’t know what to do!
It wasn’t the many hours long Lincoln-Douglas Debates….but a pretty compact power punch that made Dems gasp with horror….and Deplorables gasp with glee;
Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hbh2qXBMjuY
Mods: Haste makes waste!
In the biggest paragraph halfway through……………. If the word “term” could be inserted after “in a second”______ and before “although” that would be appreciated!
Hey Bro, how’d that jail threat work out for Trump? I don’t recall – and maybe I missed it – her ever doing a day in custody. Can you say… another… empty… promise… not kept?
I am still convinced that there will not be a debate and that a last minute ‘crisis’ will be manufactured to avoid Biden appearing.
My guess would be a ‘mild’ attack of Covid, which would have Joe isolated ’til just before the election, when the ‘recovering and heroic’ former VP would be rushed out to saturate all available partizan media outlets across the nation.
Any errors would be mitigated by his selfless stoicism in the face of recent illness, whilst bravely exhibiting determination, and strongly supported by signs of an ‘increasingly positive’ recovery.
And voila!
Debates bypassed. Senility plausibly explained away as the heroic, handicapped underdog makes his tenacious comeback against the all but unbeatable Pandemic.
And thus David, on a wave of sympathy and admiration, will bring down Goliath at the line.
I, too, will be really surprised if a debate actually takes place.
Not to mention, three . . .
If the Dems try to pull out, though, that might just really lose the election for them.
Katherine
I hope he is mercilessly trounced in the debates, publicly humiliated and shown up for the charlatan that he is.
He should never have been promoted to stand, it is a global disaster that the US ‘system’ allows such reprehensible rubbish to take place and it tells the world that there is nothing that the billionaire psychopaths will not do to keep control of the US levers of power.
Any nation which continues to look up to the US power culture needs their own head examining.
This, more than warmongering, shows how terminal the decline in US reputation is becoming….