DAVID MARCUS: Joe Biden in a wheelchair? At least Democrats would have been honest

An avalanche of revelations about just how bad former President Joe Biden’s condition really was in office is upon us, and an early contender for most shocking revelation is that his handlers actually considered putting Grandpa Joe in a wheelchair for his public appearances.

This titillating tidbit comes to us from a soon-to-be-released book, "Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again" by CNN’s Jake Tapper, who for years nodded along like a bobble head doll to claims Biden was fine and Axios’ Alex Thompson who is celebrated for doing the bare minimum to address concerns over Biden’s fitness.

Not exactly Woodward and Bernstein, over here.

Still, this morsel of news does raise an interesting question about how Democrats and their media allies approached the 2024 race. Maybe they would have been better off pulling a reverse FDR, putting Biden in a wheelchair, and saying, "this is still better than Trump."

BIDEN AIDES ALLEGEDLY FRETTED THEN-PRESIDENT WOULD NEED WHEELCHAIR IF RE-ELECTED, NEW BOOK REVEALS 

We all understand why the Biden campaign decided to lie about him saying he all but jumps rope in the Oval Office while translating passages from Ovid when in fact they weren’t sure he should even be walking. Frailty is not something most people look for in a commander-in-chief.

However, what the Democrats and the media failed to appreciate is that honesty will always play better with voters than obvious lies.

The voters I talked to across the country before and after Biden dropped out of the race in July knew full well he was in decline. Even among Democrats, it was an open secret; everyone knew.

Nobody bought the idiotic nonsense about verified video footage being cheap fakes, and I mean nobody, at least in the real world, if journalists who credulously reported it really do believe it then that’s even worse. 

For the 40% of voters who hate Donald Trump like suede hates rain, the lie made no difference at all, they would have voted for the mummified body of President Woodrow Wilson over Trump.

BIDEN'S TEAM HID THE TRUTH ABOUT HIS HEALTH ALL ALONG: WH PRESS SEC

But many accepted the lie, or claimed to for reasons similar to those stated by the old man in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 138. Speaking of his much younger lover, he wrote:

Therefore, I lie with her and she with me,

And in our faults by lies we flatter’d be.

The problem for Biden and the Democrats in 2024 was the independent voters, who would not just go along with the lie that Biden was fine, but even so were open to the idea he was a better option than Trump.

Behind all the winks and nods and bike rides and tales of feats of strength the real argument that Democrats were making, and it was still basically true when Vice President Kamala "I don’t do interviews" Harris took over, was that the Party has a team. And that team is better than Trump.

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This option was on the table as early as February 2024 when Fox News’ Jessica Tarlov wrote in these pages, "There’s no need to pretend otherwise: Biden’s old. Just concede it. But there’s a huge education gap when it comes to what he’s actually delivered for the American people and having that knowledge will help us close the chasm being created by fears over his competency."

Now, there is a wide range of opinion as to just what exactly Joe Biden "delivered for the American people," but Tarlov is right, this is at least an argument that the Biden administration is preferable to Trump that doesn’t require blatant and transparent lying.

The only thing worse than being lied to is knowing you are being lied to and that is exactly the position that Biden’s team put Democratic and independent voters in until he exited the race in disgrace.

The good news, with regard to both the Democrats and the liberal media, is that this time around we are seeing consequences for obvious lies. A price is being paid, which is the only way anything ever changes.

The Democrats’ 2024 loss was humiliating and complete because they didn’t just lose on the issues, they also got caught in the lie. So too, the liberal media can cry all the fake mea culpas they want, but their ratings and relevance are still crumbling.

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Maybe the saddest victim of this lie is Joe Biden himself, who was not allowed to end his long tenure in public service with dignity, but rather was tied to marionette strings making him dance as if he’d found the fountain of youth.

Sometimes it takes a while, but as Shakespeare also said, "in the end the truth will [win] out," maybe next time the Democrats will learn this lesson.

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