By Jeffrey A. Rendall
Try as they may, Dems can’t seem to get out from under the presidency of senile Joe Biden
Americans have been celebrating a lot of anniversaries lately, but one recent notable occasion received little fanfare, at least on the Democrat side of the remembrance spectrum.
The ignominious moment came on June 27, 2024, a date that will live in infamy for all Democrats as they seek to get beyond the old politically-driven practices and embrace the new collectivist realities. It isn’t often possible to pinpoint a singular instance where everything was lost in a particular endeavor, but then-President senile Joe Biden’s disastrous “performance” two years ago in his one-and-only presidential debate with Republican challenger former President Donald Trump in the 2024 election cycle amply qualifies for that designation.
In more relatable parlance, senile Joe’s ocean liner struck the iceberg and foundered that night.
In the know-it-when-you-see-it category, there was no turning back the clock for Biden after that couple hours in the spotlight, as a host of establishment Democrats did their darndest to try and repair the immense political destruction from senile Joe’s nonsensical issue blubbering. If Joe’s misstatements and flubs had been real bombs, afterwards, DNC headquarters would’ve looked more like the Iranian nuclear weapons development facility that Trump and the U.S. military vaporized last year.
A smidgen of the Democrats’ mojo returned in late 2025, and the new de facto socialist party steerers are mighty cocky about their recent successes, though it’s evident that liberals haven’t completely gotten over what resulted from that presidential forum disaster just over two trips around the sun ago.
In an article titled, “Two years after Biden’s disastrous debate, Dems still dealing with fallout”, Fox News commentator and Democrat pollster Doug Schoen wrote at Fox News recently:
“[D]espite promising to be a bridge between older, moderate Democrats and younger, more progressive Democrats, Biden exacerbated that ideological struggle, setting the stage for the ongoing fight today. Put another way, rather than bringing both wings of the party together in order to set a new agenda, Biden allowed progressives to rapidly ascend, while the pool of moderates shrunk ever smaller.
“To be sure, the consequences of that cannot be overstated, as it threatens the political viability of all Democrats, especially for state or national offices. While popular in deep-blue pockets, progressives struggle when the electorate expands from ultra-liberal cities to entire states, let alone for the presidency. And yet, progressives have grown so powerful within the Democratic Party that moderates are being primaried out of existence by an insurgent far-left that could keep the party out of the White House for decades to come…
“In some ways, the rise of the socialist left is the result of frustration with the Democratic establishment that Biden embodied.”
This is absolutely true, and I commend Schoen for being one of only a handful of Democrats who’s willing to tell it like it is. Many conservatives used to consider “Rajin-Cajun” James Carville as the embodiment of this type, though the Louisianan has more recently morphed into a Democrat cheerleading goon with an advanced case of TDS rather than to remain as an objective commentator.
Schoen doesn’t even scream or shout his opinions, either, which may explain why Democrats still prefer Carville and other less-than-balanced personnel on MS NOW and the residual pathetic losers on the late night talk show circuit.
Beyond this, I must admit, I had to take a step back after I read the headline and wondered with some amazement — has it really only been two years since then-President and Democrat runaway presidential primary winner senile Joe Biden practically brain-locked in front of the whole country?
Judging from my own example, one must strain to recall anything substantive that was said that night, the dialogue almost completely lost in the visual imagery of the most powerful man in the world struggling mightily to maintain facial composure while rummaging the recesses of his cranium for words and sentences and paragraphs that made sense.
“We beat Medicare.” I think that’s the one tidbit that comes to mind that the octogenarian chief executive actually articulated.
Was it a simple slip of the tongue, or, somewhere in the empty storage closet of senile Joe’s cobweb-filled brain, did he really believe the utterance?
It hardly seems important now, as Schoen points out that Biden’s fellow Democrats never fully recovered from that high-level self-immolation, the aftereffects having resulted in senile Joe’s stepping down as the leader of the liberal faction and the installation of the man’s empty-skull vice president as his heir apparent without so much as a competitive meeting or affirmation among Democrats.
The Democrat nightmare persisted with cackling Kamala Harris as the new party standard-bearer. How many Democrat refrigerators were kicked by frustrated party members whenever their woman nominee said something unintelligible, or flat out stupid?
There must still be a lot of dents in many kitchens even today in Democrat households. It’s a bad thing when all you do is bemoan what’s happening around you, a feeling that hasn’t gone away in Democrat thought-centers.
Luckily for Democrats, let’s not overlook that Republicans face an identity crisis of their own, though the nearly decade-long struggle between the Trump MAGA adherents and the old Republican establishment appears to have markedly calmed down if not completely fizzled out. Trump won. In the process, he accomplished something not even Ronald Reagan could manage, namely, the near-complete silencing of the GOP ruling elite.
We’re all MAGA-ists now, whether the bluebloods admit it or not.
Democrats appear to believe the lingering unpopularity from Trump’s non-suppressible presence and flare for controversy will save them going into this year’s 2026 federal midterm elections. But there’s still time for Trump’s policies to make progress and gas prices (and inflation) to continue to go down – and for Democrats to further their own demise — in the voters’ estimations.
Recall how Trump’s haters, a decade ago, celebrated when the New Yorker secured the GOP presidential nomination. There was even talk of “replacement” nominees to step in for Trump after he was supposedly involuntarily deposed at the party convention, and a number of prominent Republicans refused to offer their support for the new leader anointed by the primary voter participants.
Democrats said Trump would destroy the Republican party. They were wrong. Trump merely changed the GOP’s attitude and orientation towards fighting with its opponents while ushering in a fresh era of enthusiasm for (mostly) conservative causes. The base loved it, a feeling that didn’t go away during COVID and senile Joe Biden’s highly forgettable tenure.
Today, it’s the Democrats’ turn to wonder whether the socialists will foul their political pudding. The fact several radical insurgent socialists beat “safe” establishment Democrats in recent primaries means the next Congress will include a significant number of representatives who liken themselves more to Marxists/communists and anti-Israel disruptors than they do to “traditional” Democrats.
This isn’t your father’s – or Bill Clinton’s – Democrat party. These new Democratic Socialists don’t pretend to favor incremental change as their calling card. They promised their backers Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, to abolish ICE and, perhaps most of all, to end the United States’ support of Israel.
Don’t forget their vows to punish the well-to-do with higher taxes. And free everything, as though the money to finance higher education for everyone would appear out of thin air. That’s the socialist way.
The Democratic Socialists in Congress will form their own caucus, and it’ll make Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s “Squad” seem puny and reasonable — and irrelevant — by comparison.
The Democrat House leadership will experience the greatest shift, as the newcomers will demand immediate action on their agenda and won’t accept any overtures to make “bipartisan” deals with Republicans. Next year’s Trump State of the Union address could be a very raucous affair. Must-view TV, if only to see how far decorum had receded in the U.S. of A.
The Democrat party certainly moved in this direction during senile Joe Biden’s presidency, but their 2024 loss, Kamala Harris’s incompetence and the stubborn, obstinate nature of the Democrat establishment accelerated the decline.
A good argument could be made that Biden’s term as president ruined/transformed the “old” Democrat party. I wonder if the contenders for the 2028 Democrat presidential nomination will be so bold as to challenge the socialists? Or will they merely bow to the inevitable and welcome the revolutionaries into the fold?
If this is the case, the Democrat party will be more un-electable than ever with the national electorate. Outside of the bluest of blue enclaves, there’s no clamor to do any of what the socialists screech so fervently about. They’ll turn off many more Americans than they’ll attract.
The country doesn’t want Graham Platner’s attitude to prevail.
And we’ll have Joe Biden to thank for all of this. Finally, senile Joe has cemented his legacy!
Jeff Rendall is editor and publisher of GolfintheUSA.com and has written about golf and politics for over a quarter of a century. A non-practicing attorney from California, he moved to the east coast three decades ago to pursue and combine his interests in all things American history and culture. Jeff has worked as an intern on Capitol Hill and in various capacities in grassroots organizing and conservative organizations and publications, including a nearly two-decade stint at ConservativeHQ.com. Column republishing or other inquiries: Rendall@msn.com .