Guest Post: Joe Biden is NOT El Cid!

Clyburn endorses Biden
before South Carolina primary

 DON’T LET FRIENDS . . .

JOE BIDEN IS NOT EL CID

by James M. Thunder

Jim Clyburn and Joe Biden have had a decades-long friendship. Jim Clyburn, a Democratic congressman from South Carolina, is House Majority Whip and African-American. On February 26, three days before the South Carolina Democratic Primary on Saturday, February 29, he endorsed Biden and Biden won that primary 49% over Bernie Sanders’ 20%, and that win in turn gave Biden mojo going into the Super Tuesday primaries just three days later on March 3. Some members of the media have called Clyburn a kingmaker for his endorsement of Joe Biden for president.
Clyburn did not do his friend Joe Biden any favors. Neither did he do himself any favors and he did not help South Carolina or the United States. He did not “save the American Republic,” as a headline from the Charlotte Post put it. Friends don’t let friends drive drunk. Friends don’t let friends deal in drugs. Friends don’t let friends embarrass themselves in public, nationally, on TV, on social media. And leaders of the community do not encourage voters to vote for someone with mental fitness issues.

Biden clearly has mental fitness issues. Let’s take just two. Biden referred to “Super Thursday.” If there were such an event as Super Thursday, one could excuse its use on Super Tuesday as a slip of the tongue. But there is no such event. Similarly, one can understand a speaker turning to his right, holding the hand of his wife, and introducing the woman to the crowd as his sister – well, maybe, just for a second, without making the correction. Biden did not. He compounded the error by turning to his sister on his left and introducing her to the crowd as his wife. If this is what Biden does in public, how does he act in private, with family and supposed friends like Clyburn?

Biden’s situation is not like FDR running for his fourth term in 1944 when he was ill. His condition was secret. Biden’s condition is public.

The leaders of the House are all age 80: Speaker Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and Clyburn. They all know people who have various stages of mental disabilities due to age. For them to encourage a 77 year old “friend” to make a national campaign is elder abuse. It is demeaning.

As the The Onion wrote in a satire, but actually rings true: “Jill Biden [Biden’s wife] urges Democratic voters to ignore which candidates are mentally sharp enough to finish complete sentences for the good of the party.” If the Democratic Party establishment thinks that it has problems with Bernie Sanders, imagine the problems when the Democrats nominate an empty suit who cannot effectively campaign much less govern. Oh, of course: Maybe they want an empty suit, a man who will do the bidding of the establishment at every turn. You can say what you want about President Trump and Senator Sanders but no one could ever say that they are not their own men.

After South Carolina’s vote was in, a New York Times headline on March 2 proclaimed “Biden Is ‘Alive’…” Biden’s resuscitation is like that depicted in the conclusion of the three-hour epic film El Cid from 1961, starring Sophia Loren and Charlton Heston (1923-2008), as an 11th century Christian knight. (Spoiler alert.) Mortally wounded in battle, the knight pleads to return to combat, dying or dead, placed in an iron frame fastened to saddle and horse. The knight dies in the castle and the death is kept secret. His friends fasten his corpse to horse and saddle. Exiting the castle, he leads the charge, inspiring his troops and demoralizing the enemy. In the final scene, the horse, without a rider who can give it direction, trots aimlessly.

Maybe Biden was able to give informed consent when he announced on April 25, 2019, for the Democratic nomination -- just as the Christian knight gave informed consent for his corpse to be paraded in public. But now, in March 2020, Clyburn, Democratic leaders, and Democratic voters are wrong to prop up Biden who increasingly does not know where he is.

Editor's comment: Days after endorsing Biden, Clyburn, in a CNN interview, called for a "retooling" of the Biden campaign saying he could not, “sit back idly and watch people mishandle this campaign....We need to do some retooling in the campaign, no question about that." More than "retooling" is called for! Perhaps a brain transplant.

The coronavirus is a blessing for Biden, a man who can't string three sentences together without putting both feet in his mouth. There will likely be no debates, no public campaign gatherings to compare the crowds Trump pulls vs. the paltry turnout for Democrats. The puppet masters can trot out Biden for two minutes hoping he can sound presidential and be gaffe free for that long before taking him back behind the curtain. Pray for the man but especially pray for our poor country faced with the prospect of such a leader and a party that actually offers him as a candidate!