EDITORIAL: The Democrats’ presidential gamble has blown up

Showcasing their disarray, the White House and its acolytes have trotted out a variety of excuses for President Joe Biden’s alarming debate performance last week. He was jet-lagged. He had a cold. He was weakened by too much preparation. Cold medication made him foggy. He had an off night.

Nothing yet about a dog and homework. Give it time.

But what the American people watched unfold during that debate wasn’t the result of simple weariness or fatigue. It wasn’t a symptom of a stuffy nose or over-medication. It was more than a bad 90 minutes. In fact, Mr. Biden was incoherent at times, often unable to complete a thought. He was unsteady and confused for all the world to see. This, in reality, confirmed that the 81-year-old president of the United States has, sadly, suffered the mental deterioration that strikes many of us in old age.

Mr. Biden insists he will resist calls from many in his own party that he step aside and end his re-election bid.

“Let me say this as clearly as I possibly can as simply and straightforward as I can,” he said Wednesday. “I am running. No one’s pushing me out. I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end, and we’re going to win.”

Yet The New York Times reported this week that close allies of the president say Mr. Biden “knows the coming days are crucial and understands that he may not be able to salvage his candidacy if he cannot convince voters that he is up to the job after a disastrous debate performance.”

But that may not be enough. Axios reports that “major Democratic donors are now planning to move big bucks to House and Senate candidates as a hedge.” Meanwhile, OpenLabs, a progressive nonprofit polling outfit, reports that a handful of states thought to be safely in Mr. Biden’s column — New Hampshire, Minnesota, New Mexico and Virginia — are now in play.

The Democrat gamble has blown up. They cynically pushed all their chips to the middle in support of Mr. Biden, confident that they could dupe American voters into believing he had the capacity to perform the most difficult job in the world through his 86th year. Meanwhile, they loudly proclaim that Donald Trump is a would-be dictator who will dismantle the nation as we know it.

Yet how “democratic is it to ask us to vote for a man they know is unable to finish a sentence, let alone another four years?” asks Gerard Baker, Wall Street Journal editor at large. Indeed if Democrats truly believe their own hyperbole — that Mr. Trump is an existential “threat” to democracy — why did they throw their lot behind an infirm octogenarian with a first-term record that evokes memories of James Earl Carter?

Panicked Democrats reap what they sow.