In the last two days alone, the Democratic presidential field has lost two candidates. To be fair, not too many people were aware that Montana Governor Steve Bullock or former Congressman Joe Sestak were running, but they were, and now they're not. Luckily, there are still about 46 contestants left—some are still joining up!—so surely the Democratic Party will find a nominee who will not fuck this up. Right? Hello? Is this thing on?
I ask not because Sestak and Bullock are no longer running, but because Joe Biden still is. And Joe Biden had himself a weekend. We at Esquire have not historically hesitated to point out when the incumbent president shows signs that he's not exactly firing on all cylinders, and so should probably to do the same when the former vice president does something similar and he wants to be the next president. Granted, Biden has none of his would-be opponent's primal viciousness or mendacity, but there's still reason for concern.
Most folks are fixated this fine Monday on his playful bite of his wife, Dr. Jill Biden's finger at a campaign event in Council Bluffs, Iowa. That's where he kicked off his "No Malarkey!" tour this weekend. (The name appears to be a reference to a moment in the 2012 vice presidential debate, in which Biden clowned on Paul Ryan repeatedly.) The photo looks incredibly weird, though the video is slightly less so.
This might get gears turning over Biden's former habit of sniffing people's hair and otherwise engaging in uncomfortable physical contact, though he's with his wife here, not a relative stranger. (Mandatory reminder that the current president has been accused of sexual misconduct by around two dozen women.) This is generally something that you'd hand-waive away if your 77-year-old grandpa did it, except this grandpa wants to be President of the United States. It also seems like a secondary concern when compared to another video featuring Biden that surfaced this weekend.
What the hell is this man talking about? This footage appears to be from the same 2017 event in which Biden recounted a poolside confrontation with a gang leader named "Corn Pop." He remembered calling Corn Pop, "Esther" (???), and telling him to get off the diving board. Then they got in a near-violent altercation in the parking lot. What? Is this real, and if so, why would you bring it up next to an unrelated story about Biden's time as a public defender? If that was a poorly crafted parable about race relations, it's even harder to see the point of this story about kids touching his hairy legs in the pool. (Again, ???) This has nothing to do with Biden's speech issues documented recently in an Atlantic piece by former Esquire editor John Hendrickson. Why is the former vice president telling this story? Does he realize it's making people—like the young girl he puts an arm around at one point—uncomfortable and confused?
The last time I asked whether it's ageist to wonder how old you can be and still handle the rigors of running for and serving as president, some people got very mad. It's unfair, they said. People age at different rates, you can't dismiss him simply because he's 77 years old. That was when Biden was struggling to place various events within space and time, and seemed confused about his own involvement in those events. Since then, he's also had a weird time at multiple debates, including the most recent one.
Democracy inevitably involves the public putting up with the whims and delusions of the politicians who wish to represent them, not least the semi-delusional conclusion that you and you alone are the person to lead the putative free world. But at some point we've got to ask what's fair to the younger generations in this country—millions of people whose lives are in the balance in 2020. It is they who will bear the brunt of it if our republic falters and we continue to do nothing about extreme inequality and the existential threat to human civilization as we know it that is the climate crisis. Many of the people currently running to lead this country will not live to see the worst of all this. Many of them have never really used a computer. And it is they who have overseen the development of a political economy that's proven so dysfunctional that the American public living under it saw fit to make Donald Trump the president.
It is not a form of bigotry to suggest that time moves on and the same generation cannot govern the country forever. That's particularly true when a member of that generation is clearly showing signs that he is not the same man who pirouetted around Paul Ryan in that debate seven years ago. There's no doubt that Joe Biden genuinely believes he is the best person to take on Donald Trump and run the country. It's up to the public, and particularly those younger generations, to show up to vote and put that proposition to the test. Right now, Biden still leads in many polls, and his support in the black community—which is the backbone of the Democratic coalition—has been durable.
Time comes for us all, however, and someday it will even be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's turn to step back from public life and hang out with her grandkids, assuming we make it that far.
Editor's Note: This post first reported Joe Biden's "Corn Pop" speech occurred in 2019, but it was from an event in 2017. It remains weird.
Jack Holmes is a senior staff writer at Esquire, where he covers politics and sports. He also hosts Unapocalypse, a show about solutions to the climate crisis.
