Two things are possible. One: Joe Biden does, in fact, have COVID, leading him to cancel events in swing states, get back on a plane to Delaware, and “self-isolate.” He’s old and COVID can be brutal to old people, as can the effects of the Paxlovid we’ve already learned he’s taken.
In the most pregnant turn of phrase in 45 years, his own press office presented us with a letter from Biden’s doctor explaining that the president had taken the test because of his symptoms, which included a feeling of “malaise.”
That word was, of course, the takeaway from the speech that unofficially announced the futility of the Jimmy Carter reelection effort 14 months before Carter faced Ronald Reagan—and Carter never even said “malaise”! It was just what emanated from his discussion of what was ailing the country, which was not his bad leadership but a “crisis of confidence.” Carter’s effort to shift blame to the American people’s own spiritual condition was the marker of his doom. Its use again in 2024 suggests an unseen Straussian hand at work in the levers of the universe, planting esoteric messages about the end of Joe Biden’s career in his own press statements.
The other possible thing is that Biden doesn’t have COVID at all. In which case, the likelihood is that he’s gone home to Delaware, and when the GOP convention is over, he will announce his withdrawal from the race owing to a medical condition he will somehow seek to blame on Trump. What happens to the Democrats then is anyone’s guess. Among the scenarios: The party rallies around Kamala Harris. Or Biden resigns and literally makes Kamala president so she can run from the Oval Office (and on the way out the door, pardons Hunter). Or there will be an open convention, which I’m assured will be very exciting and will energize Democrats. OK, maybe. Or it could be chaos the likes of which we’ve never seen.
Remember: the debate was only twenty days ago. A week, they used to say, is a lifetime in politics. In our age, a modern Gibbon could write The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire just about these three weeks. Biden just tweeted this: “I’m sick.” And tired. And done.