President Joe Biden told Democrats today that he isn’t dropping out of the race for president.
So stop asking and speculating, he wrote. It won’t happen. Joe Biden, he averred, is the best candidate to beat former President Donald Trump.
He said the same thing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe yesterday.
But as Biden tenaciously defended his candidacy, the New York Times published more evidence that he isn’t up to the job. An expert in Parkinson’s Disease has visited the White House eight times since last summer.
That, and Biden’s obvious cognitive decline, suggest that Biden simply can’t continue in the presidency, let alone serve another four years until he is 86 years old.
Voters Have Voted
Biden 1,200-word missive is unequivocal.
“Despite all the speculation in the press and elsewhere, I am firmly committed to staying in this race, to running this race to the end, and to beating Donald Trump,” Biden wrote.
Noting “extensive conversations” with Democrats from leaders down to rank-and-file voters, Biden wrote that he “heard [their] concerns.” And he appreciates those concerns and their continued support.
“I can respond to all this by saying clearly and unequivocally: I wouldn’t be running again if I did not absolutely believe I was the best person to beat Donald Trump in 2024.”
As well, Biden wrote:
We had a Democratic nomination process and the voters have spoken clearly and decisively. I received over 14 million votes, 87% of the votes cast across the entire nominating process. I have nearly 3,000 delegates, making me the presumptive nominee of our party by a wide margin.
This was a process open to anyone who wanted to run. Only three people chose to challenge me. One fared so badly that he left the primaries to run as an independent. Another attacked me for being too old and was soundly defeated. The voters of the Democratic Party have voted. They have chosen me to be the nominee of the party.
Do we now just say this process didn’t matter? That the voters don’t have a say?
Biden asked how the party can “stand for democracy in our nation if we ignore it in our own party?”
Then came the obligatory harrumphing about his record and boilerplate attacks on Trump and “MAGA.” They included the preposterously false claim that Trump “got rich denying rental housing to Black people.”
Trump can never be permitted near the White House again, he wrote.
“The question of how to move forward has been well-aired for over a week now,” he concluded:
And it’s time for it to end. We have one job. And that is to beat Donald Trump. We have 42 days to the Democratic Convention and 119 days to the general election. Any weakening of resolve or lack of clarity about the task ahead only helps Trump and hurts us. It’s time to come together, move forward as a unified party, and defeat Donald Trump.
Biden also called MSNBC’s Morning Joe, hosted by former Republican Joe Scarborough and his wife, Mika Brzezinski.
“The bottom line here is that we’re not going anywhere,” Biden told the two leftists. “I am not going anywhere. I wouldn’t be running if I didn’t absolutely believe that I am the best candidate to beat Donald Trump in 2024.”
Biden again noted that he won the nomination.
“I beat him last time,” he said. “I will beat him this time.”
Bad News in the Times
All that might be true. Also true is that Democrats worry about his health.
Those fears had to have worsened today with the Times’s report about a Parkinson’s expert’s many visits to the White House.
Dr. Kevin Cannard, a physician at Walter Reed Military Medical Center, visited the White House eight times from July 2023 through March, White House visitor logs show. Cannard visited 10 times during Biden’s vice presidency.
“A wide variety of specialists from the Walter Reed system visit the White House complex to treat the thousands of military personnel who work on the grounds,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates told the Times:
Without discussing Dr. Cannard specifically, Mr. Bates said that the president “has been seen by a neurologist once a year” as part of his overall annual physical checkup and “that examination has found no sign of Parkinson’s and he is not being treated for it.” He declined to provide dates of any meetings between Mr. Biden and any of his specialists but said “there have been no neurologist visits besides the one for his physical per year, three in total” during his three and a half years in office.
In February after meeting with Cannard and a Walter Reed cardiologist, White House physician Kevin O’Connor wrote that an “an extremely detailed neurologic exam” had not found evidence of Parkinson’s or other neurological problems, the Times continued.
But “O’Connor did not say whether the examination contained common tests for assessing cognitive decline or detecting signs of dementia that are often recommended for older adults.”
Then again, “an array of neurologists” said that Biden displays symptoms of “Parkinson’s or a related disease,” the Times continued. “But they emphasized that a specific diagnosis could not be given without firsthand examination.”
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated Bates’s claim that a neurologist has examined Biden just three times during his yearly physicals.
“Every time he has a physical, he has had to see a neurologist,” she said.
In his Morning Joe call, Biden did not answer when Brzezinski asked whether Biden had “age-related” illnesses to explain his disastrous performance in the losing debate with Trump.
Biden claims he thought he had Covid, and that he stayed out until 2:00 a.m. after the debate.
