The Potemkin Campaign

 Like a number of other people, including (today) some Minnesota reporters who were told that only national media would be inside the hall where Joe Biden is to make his Duluth appearance, I've been wondering: what's the point? Why is this tired, incoherent old guy flying around the country only to speak to half a dozen reporters, and usually taking no questions afterwards? 

Then it dawned on me. The national media is a wholely-owned subsidiary of the Democrat party now; they can be trusted to report only what the Biden campaign wants reported. People whose sole source of "news" is that they're occasionally in the same room as a TV tuned to CNN will hear "Oh, Biden went to Florida, he went to Michigan, he's been campaigning all over the place." 

They will not hear that he gave a very short speech to a handful of reporters. They won't hear that he stumbled even over that, because evidently reading from the teleprompter is becoming too challenging for him. They won't hear that he left after taking only three questions from a list prepared in advance. 

I think the purpose of this frenetic pseudo-activity is to prepare the ground for his failure to appear in the scheduled debates. The story is going to be, "Hey, he's in great shape, he's been campaigning all over the country, he just won't be able to be in the same room as Trump on September 29 because.... reasons."

They may be testing various excuses on focus groups right now, trying to decide which one will go over best. Or they may have the "reason" prepared and ready to roll out just before the first scheduled debate. Maybe we could start a pool on which excuse they're going to use.