There are just weeks to go in President Joe Biden’s first — perhaps only — midterm election as chief executive. This is when he should be sprinting down the final mile, trying to persuade America to give the Democrats another shot and mitigate the damage from a potential “red wave” election.
Instead, yet again, Sleepy Joe is going viral for looking like a man who could use a nice, long nap.
This time, it was at an event touting the administration’s student debt relief package at the White House on Monday. Appearing alongside Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, Biden came out swinging against Republicans, saying they were “against helping millions of hardworking middle-class Americans” and were “trying to do everything they can to deny this relief, even to their own constituents.”
“As I said, we’ve received nearly 10,000 letters from across the country,” the president said.
“A woman in Colorado wrote. She grew up, she said, on school lunch and food stamp programs, started working at age 13, and on her way to college, to a good job, until she was injured in an accident and couldn’t find full-time work. She said her student loan debt was weighing her down, but now she can, quote, breathe again.”
No word on the untold millions of Americans who will have to pay for the student loans she took out who either paid theirs off or decided against going to college, or how well they’re going to be breathing when they get their tax bills.
But I digress. This only applies to federal student loans, not private ones. As Biden was on his way out, one reporter asked if there was going to be any relief for those borrowers.
She seems to have hit the pause button on the president, as Turning Point USA’s Benny Johnson noted:
Why does it look like someone hit the pause button on Biden?
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 17, 2022
Meanwhile, as Biden was on pause, Cardona said the White House was “working on pathways there to support those, but we’re moving as quickly as possible to provide relief to as many people as possible.”
These were apparently the magic words to unpause the president, who gave the thumbs up and walked off.
Again, this means nothing in isolation. Not only have Biden’s gaffes begun appearing with greater regularity when he needs them the least, but in many cases, he seems tired and distracted — the exact opposite of what one would expect of a political athlete who needs to cross the finish line strong this November.
Last week, we had this gem from an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper about the amount of money that his climate-change spending package would create in Green investment:
Biden: We’ve passed “a billion a trillion 750 million dollars billion dollars off the sidelines of investment” for climate change. pic.twitter.com/edrgOCAiYV
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) October 12, 2022
Well, that’s quite the range. (The correct number, it turns out, was $740 billion, at least according to the Bank of America report he was apparently referencing.)
The week before, meanwhile, he had these “two words” for auto workers at a Maryland plant: “Made in America!”
Joe Biden, the same guy that said J-O-B-S was a three-letter word pic.twitter.com/vyzXsEFrDH
— Charlie Spiering (@charliespiering) October 7, 2022
All right, so numbers aren’t his thing. Neither is remembering when he needs to stay at the lectern.
During a briefing with Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Deanne Criswell in September regarding the response to Hurricane Ian, Biden simply wandered off when he decided he was done, despite Criswell’s protestations:
whats with the “mr burns arms”
is that something old people do? https://t.co/HAkDYDhthf
— Tim Pool (@Timcast) September 29, 2022
And then there’s the fact he’s not particularly adept at remembering who’s alive and who’s dead.
Last month, he searched the room for Rep. Jackie Walorski of Indiana during a White House event, apparently unaware she had died in an auto accident the month before and a tribute video to her was set to be played at the conference.
“Jackie, where’s Jackie?,” Joe Biden says about Rep. Jackie Walorski who died in a car accident a few months ago. pic.twitter.com/khdiesmEsx
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) September 28, 2022
Not that this hasn’t been evident from the beginning of Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, but this is a man in his evening years who isn’t raging, raging against the dying of the light.
Is Joe Biden senile?
Instead, he’s going gentle into that political oblivion that meets all politicians at the end of their careers.
The unusual thing, however, is that Biden’s light is dimming as he’s theoretically the most powerful leader in the world on the precipice of a midterm election that could determine his political legacy.
When he cannot rouse himself for that, it speaks volumes to America — and to the world.
