We’re learning something valuable. Censorship works better than gaslighting, but even that fails. Joe Biden’s “cognitive decline” has been ongoing since at least 2019. If you didn’t understand why Biden ran his 2020 campaign from his Wilmington rec room, now you know. COVID precaution was a convenient excuse. Biden wasn’t ever going to draw a crowd like Trump, so masking up and hanging out in front of his big screen was an easy dodge. But it was his deteriorating brain that kept him off the campaign trail.

Dementia sufferers are easily confused and frustrated. They don’t handle crowds and noise well. Biden’s handlers -- during the 2020 campaign and throughout his presidency -- have been tasked with keeping venues small or ensuring that Biden is enough removed that he won’t become agitated. When he behaves bizarrely -- babbling at podiums, turning to shake invisible hands, wandering off after his remarks -- corporate media steps in to censor the fluffs.

Conservative news and social media reveal the true Biden. CNN and MSNBC audiences rarely see the real Joe, though. When Biden is seen tripping upstairs or falling off a bike, it’s shrugged off as old guy imbalance. Otherwise, corporate media audiences have had a steady diet of false narrative -- falser than the whitewash of FDR’s paralysis.

But the debate shattered the narrative. As Michael Shellenberger pointed out at X, the video clips of a feeble Joe Biden that Karine Jean-Pierre trash talks as “cheap fakes” have blown up in their faces. Some reports suggest that Biden’s fundraising is tanking. The debate was a game-changing miscalculation.

Conservatives guessed that the D.C. establishment was setting up Biden to take a fall. If so, it’s been a ham-handed bust. In all likelihood, elite conceit misled. On friendly turf -- CNN’s Atlanta studio -- along with favorable rules and a week’s worth of rest and prepping -- and Lord knows what sort of high-octane mix of meds -- the gamble was that Biden would acquit himself adequately. Instead, CNN and MSNBC viewers saw the unvarnished Biden: blanched; gape-mouthed; wandering at times in his responses; peeved; and outmatched by a very cogent Donald Trump.

The spin in the aftermath of the debate failed. Biden didn’t just have a bad night, regardless what Joe says or Dr. Jill and South Carolina’s U.S. representative James Clyburn say. In fact, their spin is withering on the vine. Many millions of Americans have or had an elderly relative or friend suffering dementia; no amount of gaslighting is persuading them that the Biden they watched isn’t broken down.

Gaslighting the economy isn’t working, either. Working-class and middle-class Americans are living with increasing, higher costs daily. Frustrated Democrats and talking heads can insist until their heads explode that the economy is improving, but people aren’t swallowing it.

In the debate’s aftermath, the major networks called for Biden to leave the race. Now, they’re back to spinning Biden as fit for office -- as if viewers are Orwellian drudges dumbly gobbling down the party line-of-the-day. Lincoln was right: you can’t fool everybody all of the time.

Savvy Washington players know that perceptions of Biden as lamebrained are now cemented in. Yet, perceptions don’t matter to Dr. Jill and Hunter. If Biden doesn’t want to vacate the nomination, he doesn’t have to. Biden’s cabinet isn’t going to invoke the 25^th Amendment. The Biden gang -- familially and criminally -- don’t want Joe to quit. When has Biden ever acted for the good of the country? When he influence-peddled the Chinese, Russians, and Ukrainians?

How would the establishment pry Biden out of the race? A cash-flush 81-year-old dementia sufferer isn’t open to “financial considerations.” He’ll never spend all his loot, anyway. Can Biden be blackmailed out of office? In Washington, dossiers work two ways. Everyone has the goods on everyone else.

D.C. insiders know that getting rid of Biden opens the door to other problems.

The main problem has a name: Kamala Harris, who’s a viscerally odious woman. Kamala is a poster girl for one of the era’s most irritating plagues: mommyism, which involves instructing adults what to do about everything. Mommies like Kamala lecture adults using monosyllabic words in short sentences about the glaringly obvious. “Now a ball is round, okay? And it bounces, okay? And we can’t let it bounce into Joe, okay?”

Mike Benz is a former State Department official who runs the Foundation for Freedom Online. He commented at X, July 2:

the entire Democratic Party apparatus is concerned about Biden losing because of voters

the entire top-level intelligence community seems unconcerned about Biden losing because of voters

my question is -- why?

The suggestion is that the intel community is prepping the rig. No doubt, it is. Does it matter to them that addled Joe Biden is perched atop the ticket?

Rigging this presidential contest comes with sizable obstacles. Biden is damaged goods -- for reasons discussed and politically. Four years ago, Biden was running as a challenger. 2020 was a referendum on Trump’s performance. This year, the roles are reversed. Even a healthy Biden would have to defend the indefensible. The cost of living is killing average wage earners. The border remains wide open. Crime has skyrocketed in cities. Campuses are continously roiled with anti-Semitism. Biden’s handlers are edging us closer to war with Russia. Where’s the prosperity, where’s the peace?

Compounding Biden’s troubles is the unique feature of this race: a former president is contesting a sitting president for the White House. That hasn’t happened since the 1892 Cleveland-Harris contest. Was life better under Trump or is it better under Biden? That’s a no-brainer for most voters.

How hard will it be to steal the 2024 election if Biden tops the ticket -- or Kamala Harris, for that matter?

Ned Ryan is the CEO of American Majority. He made this observation at X, July 7:

Curious to see if the Left’s going to do what I think re polls; pretty sure they will. You can’t steal if your boy is down 6-7 pts. But you can if it’s say 2-3 pts. The public would accept that it’s feasible at that level. So look for polls to magically tighten this fall.

Hard to argue with Ryan’s point. But the major polling outfits would have to put the brakes on sooner than the autumn. Trump is building momentum that’s being reported now. By late August his margins in battleground states may be robust enough that polls showing sudden erosion in his numbers are hugely suspect. Furthermore, there are legit pollsters who won’t play along.

Let’s assume that Trump rolls into the autumn with leads beyond the margin of error, in the 6-7 point range that Ryan suggests -- or better. Democrats and their corporate media propagandists are going to have a tough time persuading people that Democrat voter outreach operations legitimately, dramatically swung the election. Too many eyes are watching now because too many people know how Democrats and their allies stole the 2020 presidential contest.

Which leaves this to consider: How desperate will the establishment be to keep Trump from the White House? If Trump is rolling to victory this autumn and is waylaid by a deluge of “cheap fake” ballots in any of the right combinations of battleground states, thereby handing the election to demented Joe or airhead Kamala, will the nation swallow a bigger, more glaringly obvious cheat?

Will the establishment dig in its heels and defiantly challenge the country, declaring in effect: “What are you going to do about it?” And the million-dollar question is, what would we do about it?

J. Robert Smith can be found at Gab, @JRobertSmith. He blogs occasionally at Flyover. He’s returned to X. His handle there is @JRobertSmith1.

Image: AT via Magic Studio