Cloud Yells At Old Man

This past week, the corporate media apparently met in a secret conclave and emerged with a new decree for the American electorate – Joe Biden was old.

Politico announced that "the first litmus test of the 2028 campaign" would be whether or not Democratic candidates would be able to apologize sufficiently for some other Democratic officials who covered up just how old Joe Biden was and if these Democrats – who mostly worked nowhere near the Biden White House, but are responsible for its actions because of Reasons To Be Named Later – do not do that then they will have failed to appease the self-appointed gatekeepers at Politico.

Never to be outdone in the category of corporate media crapulence, CNN then went all in on the issue as well, if only because CNN Anchor Jake Tapper has a new book to sell. The cable network's breathless hype about the book was almost comical. Just take this segment in which they take a doctor's warning that, yes, if an old man were to experience a significant fall then, yes, that old man would likely need to use a wheelchair, into a scandalous claim that "Biden's doctor warned that he might need a wheelchair!"

As others have noted, it's apparently a lot easier and safer for corporate media types to fixate on the failings of an elderly ex-president than it is to turn their gaze on the elderly current president who has repeatedly given rambling nonsensical comments in public and who has repeatedly stated that he has no idea what is going on in his own government and we'd have to speak to the people in charge.

Beyond the fact that he's a sundowning loon, of course, there's all the rampant criminality and corruption to talk about, as well as the direct assault on the Constitution. (But again, BREAKING: Joe Biden's doctor thought he might possibly maybe one day need a wheelchair if he happened to fall. MUST CREDIT JAKE TAPPER.)

There's no evidence voters care at all about this issue today, and there's no chance in hell they still care about it three years from now – unless, of course, the media can make it an issue.

And to be clear, once the Democrats start jumping through these hoops, it'll become a perpetual motion machine. As soon as one of them "apologizes" (for ... not having telepathy to see through the Biden White House statements?) the media will ask others to do so, and on and on. And then they'll poll to see if this problem they created has been solved and it just never will. "Lingering problems" and "enduring distrust" and "many people are asking questions" and and and ...

The real litmus test for the 2028 campaign, it seems to me, is which presidential candidates will have the courage to tell corporate media this isn't their race to run.

I might be wrong, but I just don't think Democratic voters or even independents have any interest in relitigating the past, not when there's so much on fire in the present and so much at stake in the future. There's going to be an appetite for a fighter, and that doesn't just mean fighting Trump and the Republicans, but fighting their enablers in corporate media too. Barack Obama made a lot of headway twenty years ago rejecting the conventional wisdoms of the Bush Era, and that covered politicians and reporters alike.

Democratic candidates shouldn't listen to Politico or CNN. Democratic voters shouldn't either.