Scary Old Men

The two Democratic front-runners, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, are both quite elderly. If either one gets the nomination then he will be the oldest candidate in history (and that's with the current record-holder, Donald Trump, on the ballot). Beyond this, both candidates are getting outright scary.

Biden has a long history of stretching facts, sometimes well past the breaking point. He plagiarizes other people's stories and inflates his own story. He claims to have been in charge of drawing down the troops in Iraq but the generals in command contest that. He says that he "beat the NRA twice" referring to the Clinton-era assault weapons ban. His role wasn't big enough to make Wikipedia's summary of the legislation and the re-authorization of the law died in committee, not on George Bush's desk so it's difficult to understand what his second "win" over the NRA was.

Even his reason for running is based on the lie that President Trump called neo-nazies and Klansmen "good people". Yes, Trump said there were good people on both sides but he also made it clear that he meant people protesting against removal of a statue. In the same breath, Trump condemned the racists. Beyond this, Biden has no clear reason for running.

Biden is also getting forgetful. He's referred to President Obama as "President my boss" and to President Bush as "the last President" (somehow forgetting Obama's tenure). He frequently forgets what city or state he's in. This sort of memory loss is common in people his age but it's not comforting.

Then there are statements he's made that are difficult to decide if he's stretching the truth as he always did or miss-remembering. He claims to have met with students from the Parkland shooting in his office as Vice-President but the shooting happened after he left office. He tells about a soldier refusing an award as he pinned it on while vice president but he was wrong about the name, rank, and branch of the service the soldier was in as well as the reason for the award. In addition, he was a senator at the time and someone else was pinning on the award.

Biden also has violent tendencies. When the Billy Bush tapes came out, he said that if Trump had said something like that when they were in high school he'd have beaten him up over it. He later said that if Trump followed him around on the debate floor then he'd turn around and deck him (Note: this was a lie by the Clinton campaign. Hillary repeatedly walked across the stage and stood between Trump and the camera so Trump would appear to be looming over her shoulder). Earlier this Summer when asked about debating Trump, Biden raised his fists and mimed boxing.

Biden's violent tendencies are not limited to Trump. He's known for inappropriately touching women but he has a worse habit. At least three times in the last month, when a woman asked a question he didn't like, he grabbed her hand or arm and held her in place while he lectured her.

So, is Bernie any better? No, he's scarier.

When he ran in 2016, Bernie said that people should have gone to jail for the 2008 crash. He went on to say that even if no laws had been broken, an imaginative prosecutor can always find something to charge someone with. For his current run Saunders wants to jail oil company executives.

When asked about population control and global warming, he said that he's eliminate the Mexico City rule (which prevents the US from funding abortions in other countries) and push the rest of the world to use birth control and abortion to reduce the population. Talk about your American imperialism!

So, we have Biden who lies, forgets things and has violent tendencies and Bernie who campaigns on jailing his enemies, even if they haven't broken the law, and dictating something like China's One Child policy world-wide.

I find both of these guys terrifying.