First, there was the panic: Joe Biden, especially in the first half of last week’s debate, looked and sounded as old as an AI-generated deep fake of the president made be a 20-year-old groyper. Exercising none of the party discipline seen in the GOP — where it would be political suicide to describe a liar convicted of dozens of felonies as anything but an honorable statesman — Democrats indulged their anxiety, often in public, fretting about whether the leader of their party ought to be swapped out for someone (anyone) who is not 81 years old.
Then Biden reappeared at a rally the next day, looking and sounding like the man who previously allayed concerns about all the time he’s spent on this earth with a strong and dynamic performance during his State of the Union address. He’s still got it, some top Democrats said, pouring cold water on fever dreams of a brokered convention and a President Gretchen Whitmer.
