Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy says 'no doubt' Biden suffered cognitive decline while in office

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40. Politicians are trying to immunize themselves from what was a genuine scandal

Reality has a way of outing itself despite the most vigorous denial.

When friends and I were discussing all this last summer, I said, "It's going to be really interesting once the inevitable books start coming out next year." And here we are. It was always going to surface, because it was far too big - and far too obvious - a story.

There were legitimate questions about just what on earth was going on and who was actually running the country if the President's schedule was as compromised as it was. Don't get me wrong, whatever was going on behind closed doors resulted in some great policies. But it is still not ok to obfuscate, stonewall, and subvert the public's right to know how capable their President is. And saying, "But Trump . . ." doesn't cut it. That just brings us down to Trump's level. "Well, Trump's a lunatic, so whatever we do is fine, too." That really cannot be our message as a party.

I know this space didn't want to engage these questions and realities (and still doesn't despite the fact the rest of the country has already acknowledged all this, and it's now baked into the national narrative), but our politicians know this has to be dispensed with before 26/28. So they're saying, "Yep, that was a problem. Should've never happened. Anyway, swiftly moving on."

Which is the smart play for a situation we never - ever - should've allowed ourselves to get into.

Reality-based community. We're supposed to be that. We cannot run good campaigns if we cannot be that.