America has a choice between two kinds of crazy

‘We are the United States of Amnesia,’ said Gore Vidal in 2004. These days, it’s more the United States of Dementia. In 2020, the country seems determined to choose between two elderly men who, it is fair to say, are some distance from sanity. Joe Biden, the 77-year-old who even aides admit has lost his ‘cognitive fastball’, has somehow emerged as the presumptive Democratic nominee. Assuming that his candidacy or health don’t implode somehow between now and the party convention in July, Biden will face Donald Trump at the ballot on 3 November.

America’s choice, then, is between two kinds of crazy. The electorate can take the Republican red pill and re-elect Trump, the exhaustingly unpredictable 73-year-old Commander-in-Chief who this week, in the middle of the global coronavirus panic, tweeted a picture of himself playing the violin with the slogan: ‘My next piece is called nothing can stop what’s coming.’ Or it can swallow the blue pill and wind the clock back to Barack Obama by electing his former vice-president, who is clearly no longer in control of his senses.

Everybody knows that Biden’s mental health is a concern. It’s widely understood that he is far from the Democratic party’s ideal candidate. It’s also generally accepted that his nomination could leave a huge number of voters feeling apathetic. And here’s the really insane part: none of that matters.

The Democratic primary results on Tuesday night suggest that millions of voters couldn’t care less about Biden’s acuity; they reckon he can beat Trump. He’s a doddery old boy whose ridiculous ‘No malarkey’ campaign slogan and faux folksiness invite all sorts of ridicule. Yet he can mobilise voters in a way his rivals, including the left-wing radical Bernie Sanders, simply can’t.