Fuhgeddaboudit

There’s a pile up on memory lane. Robert K. Hur, the special counsel who investigated Biden’s handling of classified documents, released a report exonerating the president. But that exoneration included a political hit job, targeting the Biden campaign’s biggest vulnerability: the perception that he’s too old for the job. Hur described Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” (You had me at well-meaning.) If nothing else, we now sure as hell know Biden doesn’t control the Justice Department. Biden, who should have brushed it off with a one-liner instead responded with an angry press conference that included a gaffe or two. And then the salivating media, suffering from an incurable case of bothsidesism, went into overdrive. NYT (🎁): Eight Words and a Verbal Slip Put Biden’s Age Back at the Center of 2024. I suffer from a notoriously poor memory. Before hosting a dinner party, my wife regularly reminds me of the name of a key guest and adds details such as, “We’ve know him for more than 20 years, he’s been to our house many times, he’s one of your closest friends, and he’s a longtime subscriber.” Though my open Internet tabs have turned my memory to mush, I do remember how terrible the Trump presidency was and I remember what a great job Biden did turning things around at home and with our allies. And he did that long after his verbal miscues became an issue. The Atlantic (🎁): What Biden’s Critics Get Wrong About His Gaffes. That said, this special counsel’s report, and the broader response to it, is politically damaging. It’s “but her emails” on steroids. But that news came just before the election. These headlines are coming months (or about a billion psychic damage years) before the election. You know who has a worse memory than both Biden and Trump? The electorate. And like it our not, in the end, this election isn’t about Biden. Like everything else in today’s politics, the election is about Trump. His opponent is American democracy. And don’t you forget it.