It shouldn’t have come as a shock.  The surprise would have been if there were drugs strong enough to make Biden’s debate performance even passable.  He is not running the government and probably hasn’t been since he took office.

The partisans and anti-Trumpers are still trying to shoehorn their lust for power into the idea that “Trump lied,” even though Biden’s stream of lies was as obvious and brazen as his pretense could articulate them clearly.

My critique of Trump’s performance (at least in the highlights I’ve watched) was that he didn’t sufficiently explain the areas of Democrats’ greatest deceit.  He did some of that, to be sure, but the split screen with blank-faced Joe on one side was a tremendous opportunity to go point-by-point with evidence for all those “swing voters” who aren’t really swing voters, but rather simply can’t admit to themselves that they’ve been deeply deceived by Democrats.

Of course, there are multiple audiences, and the campaign may have a better handle on which it must reach.  So, I’ll content myself with succinctly laying out my take on the political situation.

In 2020, Democrats leveraged the chaos of the pandemic to cheat a man into office despite his obviously accelerating mental decline because they (1) hated having an anti-establishmentarian in the White House and (2) knew the imminent recovery from pandemic shutdowns would be a huge warm wind in the sales of the party in power.

With Biden in office, they trampled over Americans and our institutions to implement radical policies that would change the culture, ensconce ideological allies, and ensure their continuing power, especially by opening the borders.  As Biden’s condition has worsened to the embarrassing point that our world allies’ most-pressing duty is to join in the fraud and babysit him during photo-ops, Democrats have ramped up their gaslighting to surreality and turned our justice system into a political weapon.

The panic we’re seeing now may indicate, for many, that they simply can’t lie to themselves enough to buy the party’s spin any longer, but the dread at the heart of the party is a decision its rein-holders have to make.

If our system of government were operating properly, Joe Biden would (belatedly) resign today, but that would make Kamala Harris the head of the Democrat Party and unshakable as its candidate for President.  Her unpopularity and undeniable lack of qualifications mean the party has to force her to exit with Biden, one way or another.

But even the cult-like devotion of Democrats could be torn apart by an attempt to switch out the names (and factions) on the ballot.  If this were fiction, it would be amusing to ponder whether a party so invested in identity politics would be better off switching out one woman of color for another (Michelle Obama) or running back to the safe embrace of a photogenetic white man (Gavin Newsom).  Alternatively, would Americans buy the come-back of a woman they despised so much that Trump beat her in the first place (Hillary Clinton)?

Meanwhile, none of this works reliably without unity at the highest levels, and the psychopathic Biden family, with all its legal vulnerability, is not likely to exit gracefully, not least because they cannot trust even their own party not to scapegoat them into prison, or at least historical calumny.

Although the Democrats could fraud whomever they wish into office, the scam must have at least a modicum of plausibility, and they can’t risk rifts within the ring of people who can expose the treason.  Their every action will be done in the glaring spotlight of Biden’s performance, and the prior propaganda it exposed, and with the knowledge of all that they’ve already done, by which an aggressive member of the opposing party could end them simply by turning on the public lights.

Say what we like about Jon Stewart’s attempt to ham his way past his role in our condition, we shouldn’t (only) mock his cry of despair that “this cannot be real life.”  Biden laid bare that we do, indeed, live in a world in which the ruling party, the bureaucracy, the news media, the intelligence agencies, and even the otherwise disputatious leaders of our European allies will conspire to hide the truth from us.  This is a world in which systemic election fraud in “the world’s greatest democracy” is not only plausible, but to be expected.

If this read is accurate, the panic and dread are merely the surface manifestations of the deeper emotion of people battling with their consciences, asking themselves just how far they are willing to go.

Featured image from The Road to Serfdom in Cartoons.