The Democrats’ Growing Cognitive Problem

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, May 17, 2023

 

In an alternate universe in which Herschel Walker was elected to the United States Senate, we can assume that he has become the subject of near-daily derision in Democratic messaging and on late-night comedy programs. That’s a safe bet if only because Walker was derided in that manner when he was a candidate.

 

Walker was subjected to relentless mockery not just for his sordid past and poor judgment but also his penchant for malapropisms. He inspired Democrats up to and including former president Barack Obama to satirically join Walker in his ponderously off-the-wall flights of fancy. Walker was deemed a “coo-coo cray cray,” “observably stupid,” “self-aware cinder block.” Few distinctions were made between Walker’s provincialisms and his solecisms, and no dispensation was provided for the football-related injuries that may have contributed to his serial linguistic lapses. “The U.S. Senate is no place for people whose brains don’t work because of football injuries,” Stephen Colbert joked. “It’s a place for people whose brains don’t work because they’re 1,000 years old.”

 

By this comic standard, Democrats should be on the receiving end of at least some of the taunting that was deservedly meted out to the Republican Party’s senatorial nominee from Georgia. A growing number of the Democratic Party’s leading lights are fading before our eyes — a discomfiting spectacle typified by indecipherable rhetorical miscues and discernible cognitive degeneration.

 

During a congressional hearing on Tuesday, Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman asked the former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank: “Shouldn’t you have a working requirement after we bail out your bank? Republicans seem to be more preoccupied with SNAP requirements for hungry people than protecting taxpayers that have to bail out these banks.” Or, rather, that is what Washington Post White House economics reporter Jeff Stein wanted the senator to have said, though that’s not what came out of Fetterman’s mouth.

 

The senator’s soliloquy is not transcribable. Perhaps it would be charitable to display a modicum more sympathy for Fetterman’s plight than was shown to Walker. But that basic human decency must be tempered by the recollection that medical professionals assured Pennsylvania’s voters that then-candidate Fetterman would not be impaired in the long term by his 2022 stroke and by the fact that his performance fails to represent the interests of the voters who sent him to Congress.

 

The double standard that is being applied to Fetterman strains under the weight of its application to California senator Dianne Feinstein, whose condition is rapidly worsening. The longtime legislator recently returned to the Senate after a prolonged absence amid her recovery from a bout of shingles. The senator’s inability to conduct the people’s business was, however, apparently news to her.

 

On Tuesday, Slate writer Jim Newell and Los Angeles Times staff writer Benjamin Oreskes encountered Feinstein and asked her how her return to work was faring. It didn’t go well. Newell says:

 

When the fellow reporter asked her what the response from her colleagues had been like since her return, though, the conversation took an odd turn.

 

“No, I haven’t been gone,” she said.

 

OK.

 

“You should follow the—I haven’t been gone. I’ve been working.”

 

When asked whether she meant that she’d been working from home, she turned feisty.

 

“No, I’ve been here. I’ve been voting,” she said. “Please. You either know or don’t know.”

 

After deflecting one final question about those, like Rep. Ro Khanna, who’ve called on her to resign, she was wheeled away.

 

Perhaps the senator briefly succumbed to a moment of absent-mindedness owing to her age. While her years are not much greater than the average among members of the upper chamber of Congress, such incidents are a political problem for a party helmed by a figure who is similarly prone to confusion and verbal missteps.

 

President Joe Biden is, in his own words, the president of “all 50 straits and the District of Combia,” “end of quote repeat the line.” He explains that his administration’s “cumalidefasredsulc” policies will prevent “bldhyindclapding,” all while exempting Medicare from “pldaxefjs.” After all, the president can sum up American greatness in one word: “Awdsmfafoothimaaafootafootwhscuseme.” Sadly, he admits, “The bad news is I’m here because of you.” Indeed.

 

If Democrats are convinced that the only Americans who notice and are unnerved by all this are irredeemably cruel and, therefore, can be safely dismissed, they are kidding themselves. Such a rationalization would concede that only Republicans will address voters’ very real concerns about their aged leadership in Washington — concerns that are reflected in poll after poll and express a legitimate question about the capacity of our representatives to perform their elective roles.

 

The steadfast refusal of the center-left politico-entertainment complex to make the most of the material that some Democratic figures are providing underscores how terrified it is by the conclusions that its audience might draw if the media were to treat Democrats as they do Republicans.

 

This is all tough to have to watch, and American voters can be forgiven if they resent being compelled to do so. But it is a problem, and of this there can be no doubt.