Joe Biden spoke for 18 minutes today in Council Bluffs. He cut it short because we had to stand and the room was getting hot. Joe is an old school retail politician. A prominent Council Bluffs Democrat spoke first and she described how Biden called her from the White House expressing condolences on the passing on her 99-year-old mother. “No one told me your mother had died.”
The crowd was mostly older people (many older than me!) along with union members who have not defected to Trump. A small squad from the Iowa firefighters had a privileged spot in the crowd in a roped-in area.
Joe looked and sounded good for a man of his age. The only mistake he made when he greeted the crowd with, “Good afternoon, Council Bluffs.” It wasn’t even 11:30 a.m. Photographer Matt Johnson, however, was close to the front and he thought Joe looked old and tired.
If elected, Joe will resume his “moonshot” and cure cancer. He wants to take credit for the work of researchers and doctors who have made significant progress over many years. But in the same speech he promised to “throw the book” at Big Pharma and, with his new healthcare plan, there will be a cap of 8.5% of income on a person’s healthcare expenses. Without the capital to do the research, how is that going to work out?
The former Vice President complained that “billions” of opioid pills had flooded the country and many people have died of addiction. I was in Oklahoma City this week and the State of Oklahoma just finished its personal injury case against some drug manufacturers. One of the witnesses was the father of Oklahoma Sooner football player Austin Box who died before his senior year due to an opioid overdose. The thing of it is that the country was flooded with those billions of pills during the Obama-Biden Administration. Was Joe asleep at the switch when this happened?
Nearly every Dem candidate I have seen in 2019 has promised to unify the nation. It must poll well. Joe will be President for all Americans. But I’m not seeing Republicans backing a President Biden or any other Dem.
Many shots were taken at President Trump including his tweets of this week aimed at The Squad. According to Biden, if President Trump is elected for another term our core values and democracy are at stake. Trump is an existential threat, as it were. A guy in the crowd told me that the tweets conclusively proved that the President is a racist. Another guy was distressed about the freedom of press that Fox News enjoys. According to this Democrat, Fox News is an insidious force in this country as it leads to non-correct thinking. Joe’s thought on the President was borrowed from the song “Children will Listen.” President Biden will restore dignity to the office and children will be see him as a role model.
When the candidate asked the crowd if they doubted that climate change was real, some said yes. Maybe they were confused. Joe will rejoin the Paris Agreement and get the US to zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Biden’s campaign is like Hillary’s. He’s running as the inevitable nominee. No questions were allowed from us plebeians. If questions would have been permitted this is what I would have asked: You have said China is not competition for us, your climate plan would de-industrialize America in favor of China and your son is in business with the communist Chinese government to the tune of $1.5 billion.
What’s up with this?
Maybe a journalist or competitor will ask Mr. Biden this question, but I doubt it.
DDB
The Art of Twenty-First Century Wisdom: An Internet Oracle 
Thanks, Dave, for once again doing the painful (standing amongst a crowd composed people who are either evil statists or plain foolish virtue signalers) for the rest of us. And, for the great reporting.