I was admittedly stunned at what I saw last Thursday. He has to do something to assure people that his decline isn’t the sign of something much more serious than just normal aging.
If he has a really big problem, then he can do all of us a favor and step aside. If he is diagnosed with nothing serious, then that might help keep the undecideds and independents in play, as well as Dems who are a little shellshocked.
If he stays in, I’m voting for him. But I’m not sure how he puts this question about cognitive decline to rest.
Such a test might be good from a mental and job-performance standpoint, but politically, it’s not likely to help him.
If he passes it, people are just going to accuse him of doctor-shopping for a favorable result. And if he flunks it, then the storm breaks loose and everyone demands him to step aside.
MAGA will say what they say regardless of what he does.
And if he flunks it, and doctors identify a serious issue…isn’t it better to know now so he can drop out now? If he’s in early stages of Alzheimers or Dementia, it won’t get better over the next four years.
Yes it is. You’re diagnosing the man with a serious and terminal neurological problem because he had a bad debate while he was nursing a cold and on Nyquil. That’s a ridiculous leap of logic.
Debating while sick when you’re 81 years old isn’t a great idea in the first place, but I guess he decided it was better than dropping out.
I don’t know that he was on Nyquil. Could’ve been something else. But cold + cold medicine = bad debate performance is a much likelier explanation than irreversible neurological illness.
I didn’t diagnose anything. I want a doctor to examine him and assure us this is not a problem. The “head cold” excuse is ridiculous. That’s not why he was completely incoherent the other night.
At any rate, he has advisors and staff members and people who are around him all the time, who have a lot better idea what kind of neurological shape he’s in than people who watched him for a short while on TV.
I didn’t hear him sound “completely incoherant”, and a head cold sounds completely plausible to me based on experience.
Do you have any medical training that leads you to believe that he is in the early stages of dementia or Alzheimer’s? If not, why should someone believe you over the doctors whose job it is to monitor his health?
Assume Biden does have some kind of neurological issue, or the beginning stages of one. How long could the White House keep that quiet? They’d be fools to try.
I have to concur that this is quite a silly suggestion. Biden had a bad debate, ostensibly because he had a cold. End of story.
I can personally vouch for the fact that a bad cold produces cognitive impairment. Seriously. It’s more than just not feeling well. The brain actually works a little differently. I can sometimes get really creative when I have a cold, perhaps in some strange way because other cognitive functions are impaired. The effects are subtle but interesting (and it’s from the cold, not from medications). But I know I would definitely suck at debating in that condition.