Kamala’s Time

Joe Klein: “I am a Democrat by default. I can’t be a Republican because of Donald Trump. Donald Trump insults my intelligence. He tells the most blatant and ridiculous lies. He says stupid and cruel things as easy as he breathes. Joe Biden has been an honorable public servant, but he is a politician and part of the job description is to spin—to invent plausible explanations for mistakes made.”

“But Biden’s campaign and, sadly, the President himself have wandered into Trumpland this past week: They are insulting our intelligence. Their attempts to dismiss Biden’s debate performance are pathetic. Their ‘bedwetter’ campaign against those who think he should withdraw from the race is offensive. Their attempts to portray the debate as a one-off—he had a cold, he was jet-lagged, he was prepped badly—are worse than unconvincing. Everyone knows what they saw last week—and it looked very much like an aging man who’d lost his fastball or worse, an aging man debilitated by a wasting disease.”

“It’s pretty clear that the ultimate can of worms—choose your metaphor; they’re all bad—has been opened now. The topic that dare not speak its name has been broached. Democrats are talking—obsessively, in private—about replacing Biden.”