This inescapable fact was driven home by two events this week, the first in Concord, New Hampshire, where Biden, in a rare campaign appearance for but not with Harris, told Democratic campaign workers that with respect to former President Donald Trump, “We’ve gotta lock him up.”

The Trump campaign immediately seized on Biden’s gaffe, with national press secretary Karoline Leavitt telling reporters, “Joe Biden just admitted the truth: He and Kamala’s plan all along has been to politically persecute their opponent President Trump because they can’t beat him fair and square.”

“The Harris-Biden Admin is the real threat to democracy,” she continued. “We call on Kamala Harris to condemn Joe Biden’s disgraceful remark.” 

Biden’s blunder was particularly ill timed as the Harris campaign started to transition that day into its closing message that Trump was a fascist threat to democracy. It is hard to convince swing voters that Trump is the real threat to democracy when the president is all but admitting the Democratic Party is abusing the justice system to put its political opponents in jail.

The cleanup from Team Biden, however, was even more telling than Biden’s mistake. “For better or worse, no one is listening to him anymore, and his words have little power and less reach,” a Biden administration official told Alex Thompson. “It’s a blip. Gone in any meaningful way by midday tomorrow if it makes it that long.”

And the official was right. Biden is so irrelevant that the story was gone by the next day. But only because everyone understands that Biden is a mentally feeble old man to whom no one listens anymore, which only raises even larger questions: Why is a mentally incompetent man serving as president, when did he become mentally incompetent, and why did the Democratic Party clear the way for this mentally incompetent person to be the nominee?

To her credit, NBC News’s Hallie Jackson pressed Harris on these very questions, but Harris completely failed to answer. When asked if she was honest with people about Biden’s condition before his first debate with Trump, Harris said Biden is “capable in every way.” Then, when asked why he dropped out if he was so capable, Harris said, “I’m running for president of the United States. Joe Biden is not.” 

Unsatisfied with that answer, as most voters are as well, Jackson pressed again: “It’s a judgment question. That’s why I ask. Can the American people trust you in these moments even when it’s maybe uncomfortable to have to level with Americans in that way?” And all Harris could do in response is go to what David Axelrod has called “word salad city,” mumbling on about NATO and the Situation Room and Trump.

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The truth is Harris and many in the Democratic Party knew exactly how badly Biden had deteriorated long ago. According to Bob Woodward’s reporting, at a June 2023 fundraiser in Silicon Valley, Democratic donors said Biden was “frighteningly awful,” like your “87-year-old senile grandfather.”

But Harris and the Democratic Party tried to cover it up. For months. Even going so far as to attack viciously anyone who dared to say publicly what they all were saying privately. This is the lie that the Harris campaign was born of and, even if it wins, will never escape.