In a recent poll, almost 40% of Americans said they believe that Joe Biden, who won the Democrat party presidential primaries, has dementia.  Democrats have denied this like crazy, even as they keep Joe locked in the basement, where he's spot-welded to a TelePrompter.  Early Sunday morning, though, Dan Bongino dropped a bombshell: while the Democrats deny dementia in public, in private, they're grappling with the fact that not only is Biden suffering from dementia, but he's going downhill fast.

Joe Biden has always suffered from foot-in-mouth disease.  He's always been a liar and a plagiarist.  Those, however, were personality and moral problems, not signs of a damaged brain.  Lately, though, it's been apparent that something else is going on.  Biden's having memory lapses, he's obviously confused a lot of the time, his impulse control is breaking down, and he struggles to maintain his focus even when he's on the TelePrompter:

Joe Biden doesn't know what year it is or how censuses work.

"You know, in the 2020 Census which is now 2 censuses ago, soon to be." pic.twitter.com/2l7qv4jbi6

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) July 29, 2020

Teleprompter lessons with Joe Biden.pic.twitter.com/UgzC8kCOuu

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) July 30, 2020

Democrats tried to pass Biden's gaffes off as a "stutter," but we all know that it's not his tongue that's stumbling; it's his brain.

They've also tried to avoid debates.  Joe Lockhart, a CNN political analyst, said it's not fair to Biden to have to deal with Trump's inevitable lies.

CNN political analyst @joelockhart tells @smerconish that Joe Biden shouldn’t debate President Trump.

Trump “will take the truth and destroy it, and Biden will be in the position of correcting him over and over and over again. I don't think he should give him that platform.” pic.twitter.com/4EOR4Q9Um7

— CNN (@CNN) August 1, 2020

That's an amazing admission about Biden's incompetence.  If Biden lacks the mental resources and funds of knowledge to tackle an American opponent in a presidential debate, how in the world is he going to deal with the bad actors around the world?  He isn't, of course.  He'll be "handled."

All this dancing around works only if Biden is mentally stable enough at least to look presidential.  Even that, though, is a problem.  Enter Dan Bongino.

Bongino is a former Secret Service agent and hugely popular conservative pundit, with a podcast, regular contributions on Fox News, and a curated news aggregation site.  Through his past work and his current punditry, he has contacts everywhere.  That's why it means something when Bongino tweets out that Biden's rate of mental decline is accelerating, forcing the Democrats to do something:

Not a joke and not hyperbole - I’m hearing from people close to the situation that Biden’s cognitive decline is rapidly worsening and is becoming increasingly difficult to mask. The Democrats are going to have to make a decision soon.

— Dan Bongino (@dbongino) August 2, 2020

If Biden is forced to withdraw now, it would be logical to anoint Bernie Sanders as the Democrat presidential candidate.  At a policy level, the effect would be minimal because Biden has already embraced Bernie Sanders's entire socialist platform.

However, in terms of optics, Bernie Sanders would present serious problems for the Democrat party.  When less radical Democrats looked at Biden, they saw the lingering remnants of an old-school Democrat.  That allowed them to hope that while Biden might appeal to the more extreme base during the campaign, he would govern to the center.  Blacks, too, saw something in Biden: Obama's shadow.

Bernie, however, is an open socialist, which Democrats know repels mainstream Democrat voters.  Additionally, mainstream minority voters never warmed up to Bernie. 

The next choice down the line would be Elizabeth Warren.  She too is a hard socialist, though, and she has a very distant relationship with honesty.  Blacks will also resent having her at the top of the ticket if Biden is knocked out.

Theoretically, Democrats could use complicated party procedures to throw out the primaries and simply name someone to occupy the top of the ticket.  However, as the problems with Biden's vice presidential pick have shown, there's serious factionalism going on behind the scenes.  Monica Showalter looked at the top vice presidential candidates and dug into that problem:

Whoever Biden picks is going to represent the triumph of the represented faction over the other rivals. If Biden goes for Bass, he wants to win the Bernie-ites. If Biden goes for Rice, it's back to Obamadom and being Obama's shadow. If Biden goes for Harris, it's the Hillaryworld hog wallow, which should provide for young Hunter Biden and the rest of the family, as well as bring in the California elites. 

None of the three women is very appealing: Bass is a communist, Rice has the stench of Benghazi trailing behind her, and Harris is a corrupt prosecutor try to appeal to a base that hates the police.

Sometimes, it hurts to see people caught between a rock and a hard place.  And at other times, you just want to buy some popcorn, sit back, and enjoy the show.

Image: YouTube screen grab.