OCEANIA HAS ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH BRANDON:
Shot: Why Biden must withdraw.
THE PRESIDENTIAL debate was awful for Joe Biden, but the cover-up has been worse. It was agony to watch a befuddled old man struggling to recall words and facts. His inability to land an argument against a weak opponent was dispiriting. But the operation by his campaign to deny what tens of millions of Americans saw with their own eyes is more toxic than either, because its dishonesty provokes contempt.
The effect has been to put the White House within Donald Trump’s grasp. Fresh polls have found that voters in the states Mr Biden must win have moved against him. His lead may be in danger even in once-safe states such as Virginia, Minnesota and New Mexico.
Mr Biden deserves to be remembered for his accomplishments and his decency rather than his decline. So it is right that the first senior Democrats have begun to call openly for him to step aside. However, their public expressions are nothing compared with the building wave of private dismay. More of them urgently need to face up to the fact that if they do not speak out now, Mr Trump will win. In order to bring about the political renewal that America now so clearly needs, they must call for change. It is not too late.
Democrats argue, rightly, that Mr Trump is unfit to be president. But the debate and its aftermath have proved Mr Biden unfit, too. First, because of his mental decline. Mr Biden can still appear dynamic during short, scripted appearances. But you cannot run a superpower by autocue. And you cannot put an international crisis on hold because the president is having a bad night. Should someone who cannot finish a sentence about Medicare be trusted with the nuclear codes?
—The Economist, today.
Chaser:
“Cheap fakes” are the “newest weapon in US politics”, wrote Gary Mason in the Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper. Republicans and the far right have spread these videos, which are manipulated to the point of being “outright lies”, to erode confidence in Mr Biden’s “mental capacity”. “Millions of unsuspecting people” have been “duped”. It’s “the dystopian future predicted in sci-fi movies”, argues Mr Mason.
—The Economist, June 25th.