SERIES 2 EPISODE 206: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN

A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: “I wasn’t very smart. I decided to travel around the world shortly before the debate,” the President has now said at a fundraiser in Virginia. He then described his arduous travel through 15 Time Zone changes for the G7 and D-Day, and how it affected him at the debate: “I didn’t listen to my staff and then I came home and nearly fell asleep on stage.” The debate was June 27. He returned from his travels on June SIXTEENTH.

This followed by only a few hours a suggestion from Nancy Pelosi that Biden (and Trump) takes an acuity test: "Both candidates owe whatever test you want to put them to, in terms of their mental acuity and their health — both of them. I think it's a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or is this a condition? When people ask that question, it's completely legitimate — of both candidates."

Pelosi thinks Biden has an episode? Or a condition?  If there were anything Pelosi could have said that would do LESS to contain all of this, I am hard pressed to guess what it could have been.

And there are disastrous new internal polling numbers leaked from Democratic pollsters OpenLabs to Puck News. Since the debate, New Hampshire has now become Trump by three, Virginia is Trump by one and a half; that the president now has leads of half a point or less in New Mexico, Maine, and Minnesota; that Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona, George, North Carolina and the Nebraska Second are all Trump by four or more and it’s seven in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Biden’s support dropped by roughly two percentage points in all twelve of these states and in Colorado and Minnesota. If he cannot recover all of this, the Democrats are looking at a loss of at least 100 electoral votes.

The profound moments of American political history – secession, Watergate, Teapot Dome, the retirement of Lyndon Johnson, all the rest – share one commonality. These stories have each taken on a momentum of their own; they have each reached a tipping point when – whether quickly or imperceptibly – the other option began to disappear. The momentum in the Biden Re-Election story changed yesterday. And the tipping point may have been reached.

The good news could be that suddenly the only candidate with the age problem, would be Trump. The only candidate with the uncertain grip on reality, would be Trump. The only candidate to be called feeble or gaffe-prone or lost, would be Trump. And if Biden really were convinced to retire from the ticket and the office in order to send Kamala Harris into the campaign with the incumbency, she would be the first woman president of the United States asking the voters to validate her with a full term of office – and doing so when a primary plank of the Democratic campaign is the Republicans’ assault on the rights of every woman in this country.