Now he tells us. George Clooney, who hosted a multimillion-dollar Hollywood fundraiser for President Joe Biden several weeks ago, on Wednesday took to the pages of the New York Times to announce that "the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe 'big F-ing deal' Biden of 2010. … He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate."
Clooney's concern and that of the Democratic lawmakers to whom he has spoken is not that Biden has a neurodegenerative disease that makes him unfit to govern. It's that Democrats are "not going to win in November with this president," that "we won't win the House, and we're going to lose the Senate."
Clooney didn't bother sharing his concerns when he saw them, but give him credit for his honesty now. For the leaders of the party trying to make "protecting democracy" the central issue of this campaign—that includes the mainstream media—their concern is not the president's diminishing mental capacity, which has been plain for the rest of us to see for the past several years, but that the poor geezer can't win now that Democrats can no longer hide it from the willfully blind.
If the president is cognitively impaired, and he clearly is, he should resign his office immediately. For concerned Democrats like Clooney who have seen Biden up-close and participated in the cover-up, the president's poor standing in the polls isn't actually an adequate reason to toss the party's nominee overboard and disenfranchise the millions who voted for him in the process.
Clooney is hardly alone. Sen. Jon Tester (D.), who is facing a tough reelection race in Montana, told a local television station that "President Biden has got to prove to the American people—including me—that he's up to the job for another four years." Sen. Patty Murray (D., Wash.) said in a statement that "President Biden must do more to demonstrate he can campaign strong enough to beat Donald Trump." And former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) chimed in to tell Democrats to "hold off" until "we see how we go this week."
Back in the real world, the time for choosing is over. Democrats shunned and abused Rep. Dean Phillips (D., Minn.), who ran a primary campaign against Biden, arguing it would be "impossible" for the president to do the job for the next four years.
"At that stage of life, it is impossible ultimately to conduct, to prosecute the office of the American presidency in the way that this country in the world needs right now," Phillips said in January. "That is an absolute truth." He said Biden is likely to lose.
Perhaps most preposterous about Clooney's edict to the peasants is his call for a fast-run mini-primary with no opposition research or negativity. He would foist on the country another handicapped dotard so that he might bravely tell us again, after the fact, that he/she/they saved democracy but is/are perhaps not right for the job. We can only hope that Old Joe is as amused by these dog-faced pony soldiers as we are.