By Alex Mangie: Joe Biden cannot hide in the basement forever.
The presumptive nominee will eventually have to leave the basement, open his mouth, answer a difficult question, and defend a position. When a person runs for the office of president, it should go without saying those are things any normal voting American would expect a political candidate to do. Whether you love Donald Trump or hate him, the man has put himself out there for interviews, press conferences, public speeches, and rallies to be available to the public, both as a candidate and as a president. He has been the media’s whipping boy for four years (if you include his time as a candidate in 2016). He has also taken his fair share of abuse from the simpletons in the House leadership as well as from Senators like Chuck Schumer who undoubtedly would be awarded a Razzie for the worst impersonation of a politician who cares, if such awards actually existed. Political theater is very big to Schumer, but his pretentiousness is a bit suffocating.
In contrast, Joe Biden has been unavailable to public scrutiny. He does very small events to handpicked media figures who throw softball questions at him with the style and grace of an Anthony Fauci who had a case or two of Corona’s before the first inning. He seldom takes questions and sits for interviews, though if he does he is extremely prone to gaffes, which explains why his campaign has been trying to keep him hidden for months. COVID-19 has been the perfect cover to keep a man who legitimately is having mental issues due to his age from being seen by the voting public, and I have a hunch he will try to exploit that to get out of the upcoming debates—more on that in a bit.
Recently, Trump did a difficult interview with Chris Wallace who pressed Trump on a number of issues with pointed questions that any president or candidate for president should be able to handle. Anyone who has watched Chris Wallace knows he is not a big Trump fan, so it is not surprising he did not go easy on him. Wallace offered the same kind of interview to Joe Biden, and his campaign said he is “unavailable”. Since Joe Biden is not keeping a full schedule these days, this avoidance of another interview to avoid media scrutiny feeds the speculation that Biden will avoid any media that would make him answer tough questions that undoubtedly will chip away at any advantage in the polls he has—if you even believe the polls are legitimate.
Biden is trying to run out the clock like Jim Tressel at Ohio State in the 2nd Half when the Buckeyes are trying to maintain a lead without engaging in any offense—it invariably bit Ohio State in the ass a few times in Tressel’s tenure. Unfortunately for Biden, there are debates looming, and he will eventually have to open his mouth to answer a question, and his opponent. The Biden campaign is scared to death of this, and they will use every underhanded tactic at their disposal to have the debates called off because of COVID, and I wouldn’t put it past him to claim he has non-symptomatic COVID himself to get out of being onstage with Trump. Should he decide to participate, he will receive help from whatever liberal moderator there is by relaxing the rules or coming down very hard on the rules for Trump specifically. Mentally Biden is not all there, and it would take a herculean effort on his part to outdo Trump in a debate. His problem is these debates typically come in three’s, and if he doesn’t have the juice to sit with Wallace for an hour, he will not have the strength to run this debate gauntlet.
One way or another, Basement Joe will have to come out and play.