Biden looks like a basket case in shocking debate performance — He can’t continue on

 

It’s a good thing for Joe Biden that the debate wasn’t held in Harlem’s famed Apollo Theater. The audience would have given him the hook and hooted him off the stage.

That’s how bad he was. 

Our president is not fit to serve. Forget concerns about how old and infirm he would be after a second term. 

He’s a basket case now. 

Biden took the debate stage looking like he just escaped from a wax museum and spent much of his speaking time chewing his words before trailing off. Several times he confused millions with billions and ended one incoherent sentence by saying “we finally beat Medicare.”

Huh? 

The leader of the free world doesn’t look well enough to have a driver’s license or dress ­himself. 

Confused old man

For his part, Trump was solid and hit all the main areas where Biden has failed: inflation, the border and the economy. 

In a bid to broaden his appeal, he talked about helping black and Latino citizens and several times focused on how the millions of illegal migrants pose economic threats to the poorest Americans. 

The former president seemed well prepared and, I believe, minimized the danger the abortion issue presents by stressing that each state gets to decide and that whatever limits are imposed, there must be exceptions for the health of the mother. 

Several times Trump looked like he was getting hot over Biden’s insults, but managed to steady himself without saying anything that would scare ­voters. 

That was his main objective and he achieved it despite Biden’s clear goal of trying to get under his skin. 

But ordinary score-keeping does an injustice to what Americans witnessed. In an unprecedented event, a sitting president of the United States looked like a confused old man knocking on death’s door. 

I say that not out of cruelty or with joy. It is simply a matter of fact that the condition of our president should alarm all of us. 

Biden’s undeniable decline must also be scaring our allies, who already worry that America is a diminished superpower on a turbulent global stage. 

Whatever concerns they had before last night were certainly magnified by the appearance of a frail, shrunken president.

Indeed, 10 minutes into the debate, an ardent Democrat texted me that the election was over and fumed that Dems should have stopped Biden from running. 

That is easier said than done, and although there were many voices who feared Trump would beat him, there was no clear alternative. 

Most important, as long as Biden wanted to run, there was no effective way to stop him.

The president and First Lady Jill Biden were resolute in insisting that he was good enough to go and that only he could beat Trump. 

That now seems like a pipe dream as the question arises about what to do. A decision can no longer be avoided, in part because Vice President Kamala Harris is next in line for a job that nobody in America wants her to have.

The irony, of course, is that Biden demanded the debate — the earliest in modern history — to try to calm the storm in his own party about his fitness. With polls showing Trump building a lead in the national popular vote and the battleground states, the clamor for Biden to pass the baton to someone else was getting louder. 

He can’t continue 

His sudden decision in May to call for the showdown was a gamble that he could put the party at ease by putting Trump in his place. 

In addition to the debate, Biden’s campaign took the highly unusual step of pouring $50 million into TV ads in the swing states in June. Normally, that kind of targeted blitz would come in the fall and be part of a closing push.

But Biden didn’t have the luxury, or the poll numbers, to follow a normal schedule and wait that long. He needed to do something to lift his numbers fast, lest the August convention turn contentious over his nomination and propel the party into a November shellacking.

But Thursday changes everything. He can’t continue in this condition.

Tellingly, he also resorted to some of the same dirty tricks he used in 2020. Then his campaign helped gather 51 former intelligence officials to sign a letter suggesting Hunter Biden’s laptop was likely Russian disinformation. 

Biden himself called it a “Russian plant” at his second debate with Trump that year, a lie because he had to know The Post’s stories were authentic. 

Nonetheless, the lie worked well enough and he was elected. 

The campaign tried something similar this time, getting 16 Nobel Prize-winning economists to sign a letter arguing that Biden’s economic agenda is vastly superior to Trump’s.

But as Fox News noted, 13 of these same Nobel laureates also signed a 2021 letter in support of Biden’s economic agenda and wild spending plans, just before its policy lit an inflation bonfire that hit 9.1% and that is still driving prices higher and higher. 

Fox also notes that the first signature on both letters was that of George Akerlof, a 2001 Nobel laureate who is married to Biden’s Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen.

Dems’ problem now

In light of Biden’s performance, the dirty trick looks pathetic. And meaningless. 

Nothing anyone can say or do will erase the ghost-like image the president presented in Atlanta.

The only question now is how Democrats are going to find a way to usher him off the stage and give the nomination to someone else. That’s their problem. 

The problem for the rest of us is that Biden will likely remain as president until January. Now that every despot in the world has seen how serious his condition is, what happens between now and then? 

BY Michael Goodwin NYP