They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. That’s all well and good, but, on February 4, Joe Biden will be happening in Vegas and, unfortunately, will probably not stay there unless he wanders off and misses his Air Force One flight back to DC. The Silver State holds its Presidential Preference Primary elections on Tuesday, November 6, for both parties, with a Republican caucus two days later. Confused? So is everyone else – especially Biden, though his state of confusion is more a general and permanent thing and has little to do with the GOP’s caucus-primary circus.
Scheduled to appear at a reportedly closed-door event in Las Vegas’ Westside district, Joe Biden will be courting the black vote – a demographic with which he is struggling compared to every other Democrat presidential candidate in living memory. Blacks in America long ago forgave Biden for opposing desegregation and saying, in 1977, that it would mean “my children are going to grow up in a jungle, the jungle being a racial jungle…” Still, an unusually high percentage of them struggle to see any way in which the current chief executive has improved their lives.
Nevertheless, the old man is a shoo-in to win his party’s nomination and compete for a second term in the White House. Well, not so much the White House as the beach in Delaware, islands in the Caribbean, and fancy dinners with his son’s business associates. Running the country is something he will leave to others, as he has done during his first term – assuming, of course, that he wins in November.
Joe Biden the Gambling Man
Las Vegas, AKA Sin City, is certainly an appropriate venue for Joe Biden. He has, after all, spent his time at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue gambling away America’s future. We may well all have been better off if he had gone there sooner and put down at the roulette table all the money he sent to Ukraine. Had he lost, the outcome would have been no different.
What can we expect from Biden’s campaign stop? More of the same, of course. With no achievements to brag about, his address will focus on Donald Trump, MAGA extremists, and threats to democracy. We can also look forward to some trademark get-off-my-lawn anger and shouting. For a wobbly octogenarian who clearly has trouble fighting sleep, the man does like to portray himself as some kind of tough guy. Perhaps he’ll treat his no doubt carefully selected audience to a recounting of how he threatened to beat “bad dude” Corn Pop with a chain. Hopefully, though, they won’t have to hear about the children rubbing his legs in the swimming pool. He might throw in some bragging about the CHIPS Act, though, thinking it had something to do with the gambling capital of the country.
Is there any point to it all? The truth is the Democrat primaries were always a joke – at least this year. The party is going to stick with their cognitively challenged symbolic leader because to allow any other outcome would be to admit what every sane American already knows: Joe Biden has been the worst president in American history. There have been some terrible presidents, but even the least competent and least honest of them did not preside over the kind of economic, cultural, and national security implosion the Biden administration has visited upon us.
There is one supremely good reason that a campaign appearance in Las Vegas is so very appropriate for Joe Biden. Author and radio host, the late Hal K. Rothman, once said: “No one thinks Las Vegas is real; it is illusion, but visitors willingly suspend disbelief and pretend.” What better metaphor for the Biden presidency could there possibly be?
