Miranda Devine: Not even Obama can save Biden on the charisma front

It is hard to think of a worse candidate in history than Joe Biden - it is painful to watch the former Vice President stumble and bumble to the end, writes Miranda Devine.

Has there been a worse candidate in history than Joe Biden?

When this election is over, the books revealing what went on backstage will be illuminating.

But the truth is there for anyone with eyes to see.

Take Biden’s car rally in Flint, Michigan on Saturday, with a star-power assist from Barack Obama.

Awkward barely covers it.

Obama, effortlessly cool, gave a warmup speech to the assembled cars before ramping up to a dramatic introduction: “My friend, the next president of the United States of America: Joe Biden!”

Moments ticked by, but there was no sign of the candidate.

Joe Biden speaking at the campaign rally in Flint on Saturday. Picture: Supplied

“Joe Biden!” Obama repeated, a little less confidently. But still no show.

Obama tried a third time: “Joe Biden!”

Biden at last emerged from a nearby building and did a pantomime slow jog to the stage.

The worst part came later.

After Biden had shouted his way through a short teleprompter speech, Obama came back onstage, perhaps to escort him off, because Biden did not seem to know where he was.

Obama mimed an elbow pump with his former VP to signal they should leave the stage and then quietly whispered to him, after which it dawned on Biden he’d forgotten his mask, not for the first time. When your entire campaign is about mask-shaming Trump supporters, it’s not a forgivable lapse.

Poor Biden looked like a chastened schoolboy as he fumbled through his folder and all his pockets looking for that pesky piece of cloth.

He walked back to the lectern and searched, to no avail, before fumbling through his pockets again. Finally, he found the mask in his left trouser pocket, held it aloft sheepishly at Obama, and placed it on his face.

But then he paused and looked in seeming confusion at the microphone lying on the lectern where he’d left it. He picked it up and held it briefly to his masked face before laying it down again and rejoining Obama.

Whatever emotions were going through Obama’s mind at that point he kept under wraps, but he did slow down and look back solicitously as he shepherded Biden down the stairs and away from prying eyes.

In other words, he was treating the man who would be president like an invalid.

Really, it was sad.

But this is the story of the campaign, encapsulated in 70 seconds of video, and it is an indictment on the entire Democratic establishment which has conspired to trick America into voting for someone incapable of being president.

Biden’s cognitive decline has been obvious for months. It’s more than his trademark clumsy gaffes such as “You ain’t black” or “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.”

Biden onstage with former President Barack Obama. Picture: Supplied

It’s the fact he often has no idea where he is.

“Hello, Dallas,” he said in Pennsylvania.

“Hello, Florida,” he said in Minnesota.

In Iowa, he thought he was in Ohio.

Or he doesn’t know what year it is. “I’m running as a proud Democrat for the United States Senate,” he has said more than once.

Last week, he seemed to confuse Donald Trump with former President George W. Bush. “Four more years of George, uh, George,” he said.

It’s his chronic inability with numbers, last month saying “200 million” Americans had died from COVID-19, which would be nearly two-thirds of the US population. During the primaries he declared guns have killed “150 million people” since 2007.

It’s his flashes of anger when challenged: “Hey, fat” he called one voter, “horse’s ass” he called another. He pokes people in the chest, wags his finger in their face and shouts. One young woman he bafflingly called a “dog-faced pony soldier.”

Last week Biden seemed to think he was running against former US President George W. Bush. Picture: Alyssa Pointer/AFP

After previously saying he is tested “all the time,” he flew into a rage when asked by a black journalist if he’d had a cognitive test. “Why the hell would I take a test? C’mon, man . . . Are you a junkie?”

Trump now plays videos of Biden malfunctions at rallies. “He’s shot. Let’s face it,” the president said in Michigan on Sunday. “Those are the easy ones as we didn’t want to go any worse . . . They’re so bad that they’re not even funny.”

No, it’s not funny. It’s reprehensible.

Democratic powerbrokers schemed to choose Biden when there were other, more capable candidates on offer.

They knew his mind was going, and after 47 years in office, they must have known his character deficits.

In recent weeks, mounting evidence of his involvement in his family’s alleged influence-peddling schemes sent him back into the basement to avoid corruption questions.

The only reason the wheels haven’t fallen off his campaign is that almost the entire media establishment, coupled with the sinister power of Big Tech, is in collusion with the Democrats to cart Biden over the line and hide his frailties.

Biden with Hillary Clinton in 2016. Picture: Brendan Smialowski/AFP

They were shamed into accepting blame for Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016 and now are trying to atone by giving Biden the easy run she convinced them she deserved.

But it hasn’t worked. In a sign of the panic now engulfing the Democratic Party, New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson tweeted out an “urgent” plea late Saturday night for volunteers to go “knock doors in Pennsylvania,” the crucial swing state where Trump drew 57,000 people to a rally that day.

If Biden loses the election, as increasingly seems likely, Democrat voters ought to understand where their anger should be directed.

Not against Trump voters, but against a party machine that delivered a candidate so deficient that all the considerable mythmaking talents of East Coast journalists could not convince us he was up to being president.