Slipped Biden a Mickey

Don't you think?

Susan Blount, my sister, is a get-out-the-Democratic-vote activist in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her organization, Neighbors on Call, focusses mainly on house-to-house canvassing in support of progressive state-legislature candidates, but it also recently hosted a rally addressed by Heather Cox Richardson. Here is my by-no-means-batshit sister's explanation of Joe Biden's recent wretched debate performance:

            "Somebody slipped  him a mickey."

            Makes sense to me.

            It's hard to believe that a mere cold, or advanced age, could render a seasoned politician, at such a crucial moment, unable to clear his throat.

            He sounded stricken, strangled. Choking, okay, but not as in a failure of nerve. As if he'd taken a hit to the throat, and couldn't get past that to say what he was thinking. Temporarily. As the debate went on (and as Trump grew more and more -- let's not forget this -- more and more himself, which is to say more and more insane), Biden segued into himself, making sense.

            Biden's stutter was a factor, no doubt. But over the years Biden has dealt with that speech impediment far more responsibly than Trump has dealt with his own common-decency impediment. Toward the end of the debate, Biden was working with his impediment, Trump was indulging his.

            The day after the debate, Trump was as foul as ever. Biden, in North Carolina as it happens, was full of beans. Here's how the Times reported:

            "Delivering his remarks from a Teleprompter, and freed from rules that required him to hold his own, without notes, for 90 minutes, the president appeared to find the energy and clarity that had eluded him in the Atlanta debate."

            The Times did not get off into something like, "Last night, for God's sake, somebody must have slipped the man a mickey!"

            Because you can't see what's right there in front of you when you're leaning over backwards.

            My sister leans Democratic without apology, and she thinks somebody slipped president Biden a mickey.

            So do I.

            Show us where we're wrong.

            The Russians have the knowhow. A tap on the back of the neck (where Biden's old-guy haircut ends) would have sufficed. It's a wonder Biden didn't transmogrify into Snuffleupagus before our eyes.

            And MAGA and Russia (philosophically at least) get along. Collude? Yeah, collude. One of the great MAGAn myths, like "Russia Russia Russia," is that collude has been ruled out. But even without Russia, MAGA spokesfolk kept predicting before the debate that Biden would be hopped up on some kind of drug. Is it not like a MAGA joke, to have slipped the president something that hopped him down?