After Biden finally showed the nation this evening that all the popular talk about his “senility” was not just baseless insults, I think back to the moment in the 2020 Democratic Debate when candidate Julian Castro asked Biden “Are you forgetting what you said two minutes ago?” and was dogpiled immediately by the liberal mediasphere, accusing him of rudeness and ageism.

I think this kind of “how dare you?” outrage to snuff out earnest and founded criticisms can be a dependable political tool, and of course you don’t want to encourage the masses to delight in cruelty on a regular basis, but I think behind closed doors every political faction needs a space to soberly and mercilessly assess incoming criticisms/insults that are gaining popular traction, however harsh, unfounded or even bigoted they are.

If the attacks are based on lies, you workshop resonant ways to get the populace to believe something else. If they are based on some truth, you work around it or hide the shit out of it. But the Biden team has clearly been operating in that purgatory where they aren’t all on the same page about the premise of Biden’s infirmity, and therefore cannot develop a unified strategy to mitigate this liability. His staffers make a show of attacking journalists who insinuate Biden is not all there, but yet let Biden do a long debate where his impairment couldn’t be more obvious.

I think brutal self-honesty that sometimes even borders on cruel has a place in every movement. It steels you against far more ruthless attacks from your outgroup. The Dems were able to shame Julian Castro out of mocking Biden’s age by going “how dare you!” and able to shame us on the left telling Biden to “draw a clock” by dismissing us as ungrateful youth, but these strategies simply don’t work in any general election, they have no purchase the eyes of the voter who has no affiliation, and impart no shame upon the merciless outgroup hoping for another guy to win.

Without the core Biden team daring to even broach the “old man” criticisms amongst themselves, spewing the same line that he’s “sharp as a tack” to both the press and each other, and putting out “ironic” jokes mocking how ridiculous the idea of Joe being on uppers is, but also treating that accusation as ridiculous off-screen, well, that kind of toxic positivity will have you sleepwalking into historic loss and humiliation.