This seems to be the weekend for Democratic gaffes from Joe Biden and John Fetterman (although to be fair that seems to be most weekends). Add now: Jill Biden.
Joe Biden is a very poor speaker, and that was the case before he truly began to deteriorate. It’s why he was never taken seriously and one of the reasons I think Barack Obama reportedly said never to underestimate his ability to “f**k” things up. He used to be known for gaffes before the Democrats had to remake him to try to win in 2020.
As we noted this weekend, he was in Portland, Oregon where he delivered remarks and forgot the name of the senator he’d just introduced some moments be fore. He even mangled the delivery of one of the stories he frequently tells about his grandfather. Then he also claimed that “the economy is strong as hell” while engaging in some more “creeping and sniffing.”
However, Jill Biden is a teacher, you would think that perhaps that might mean she would be better as a speaker. But not so much.
She was in Florida to stump for Rep. Val Demings (D-FL) who is running for the Senate there against Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl). She was with Demings and Charlie Crist, who is running for governor of Florida against Gov. Ron DeSantis. They were speaking before an Orlando Pride group. But someone should put a pander alert out whenever she’s speaking because it seems not to go well. She is not a natural speaker and she tries to push Crist as well, insisting that he will win when he’s about to get sent packing by DeSantis. But when Biden got to the point where she was supposed to say “LGBTQ,” she completely butchered it and couldn’t seem to get it right, even though she was reading from a prepared speech. She says “LBGT” then tries again, then says “LBGDQ” That’s at about 1:59 on the video if you want to skip to it but the whole video which is short shows the issues.
Notice they also don’t show the size of the crowd in the shot, they just kept a tight shot on Biden. I’m thinking it had to be a pretty small crowd, it didn’t sound particularly large.
But this was a bit of a reminder of how things went so wrong when she compared Latinos to breakfast tacos and spoke about the “bogidas” of the Bronx. How about talking like a normal human being without trying to pander?
After hearing Doug Emhoff speak at a Rosh Hashanah event at the White House in September and listening to him deliver a competent, coherent speech from the White House podium, I realized how much I missed that. He spoke like an adult without any cackling. He treated the audience like adults, he didn’t sniff their hair. He even told an effective and humorous anecdote that I found funny. So I’m calling for a “Draft Doug” campaign because even if I probably wouldn’t agree with what he said, it likely would be coherent at least.