Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski grew up in Washington, D.C. politics. Her father, Zbigniew Brzezinski was Lyndon Johnson's foreign policy advisor. She has known Joe Biden for decades.
She is not calling for Biden to step aside and it's not because she likes him. Unlike any other source that we've seen, she looks at the whole picture, showing what is arguably Biden's worst moment in the catastrophic debate. She called the debate "an unmitigated disaster."
Then she describes the remarkable comeback Biden made at a North Carolina rally the next day.
What happened? On debate night, she points out, Biden was fresh off back-to-back trips to Europe, first to Normandy for the 80th anniversary of D-Day and a state dinner, then to the G7 meeting in Italy, Brzezinski tells us, followed by a flight across 12 time zones to a Los Angeles fundraiser with Barack Obama. Then, just 33 hours later, he was headed back to the east coast for the 9 p.m. debate. She points out that the debate was only two weeks after Hunter Biden was convicted and his father had made the painful decision not to pardon him, yet to continue to support him as a parent.
In other words, Biden was doing his job. But, as Brzezinski points out, the schedule would have blown out a younger man - or woman. Brzezinski called the scheduling evidence of a lack of "discipline" in the Biden campaign.
As Biden recovered from the travel, and perhaps from the cold he is said to have had, he acknowledged that he isn't as young as he used to be, winning cheers from a North Carolina audience.
There is no evidence that Joe Biden has dementia. But he is 81, and the presidency has aged him, particularly over the last year. Listen to what Brzezinski says about age, and how it has to be "managed." It is time, as she says, for the Biden camp to reassess. Address the question of dementia. If that is not a factor, come to terms with Biden's age. Biden's experience has been a tremendous asset over the course of his presidency. It still can be. But he must accept some limitations and his staff must insist.
Unless there is genuine concern about Biden's performance being due to something other than age, the risks of jettisoning an incumbent are far greater than many pundits acknowledge. Listen to the end of this striking - and strikingly fair - commentary.