So much of the focus nowadays is on Joe Biden's mental impairment and shaky memory. But perhaps Joe Scarborough should have his own noggin checked out. Because he seemed to have suffered a stunning memory lapse on today's Morning Joe.
Scarborough spent the first segment whistling past the graveyard of the disastrous Washington Post/ABC News poll showing Biden losing by nine points to Trump, and then went on to trash the "fools" who thought they were "truth tellers" suggesting doom for Biden in 2020 and 2022.
Scarborough somehow forgot that among those people writing off Biden was . . . Joe Scarborough himself!
On February 13, 2020, two days after the New Hampshire primary in which Biden finished a dismal fifth with only 8% of the vote, we caught Scarborough having written in The Washington Post what amounted to a fond eulogy of Biden's political career. Scarborough questioned "whether his campaign can survive the body blows delivered by Iowa and New Hampshire . . . Americans do not need to see how this political race ends to know they are already proud of Joe Biden. And you can put me at the top of that list."
We weren't the only ones who, correctly, saw Scarborough's column, which notably was entitled, "No matter how this race ends, I’m proud of Joe Biden," as Biden's political obituary.
So much so that a defensive Scarborough subsequently tweeted a denial that the column was what it was: a political obituary. Except . . . Scarborough didn't issue that tweet until almost a month later, after Biden's stunning victory in the South Carolina primary, which raised him from the political dead and sent him on his way to the nomination. In other words, for almost a month, Scarborough stuck with his Biden obituary -- until events proved him wrong.
That's a stark contrast with today's (perhaps unintentional) self-denunciation:
SCARBOROUGH: I can show you one expert after another mocking and ridiculing Joe Biden, the Democrats, for their strategy leading up to the 2022 midterm. the so-called truth tellers, they made fools of themselves mocking Democrats and Joe Biden and, as always, there was no blowback for underestimating Biden. They were proven wrong.The irony of people attacking the press for not telling the truth, and then being willfully blind to all of their terrible predictions in 2020 and 2022 is pretty thick.
People said Biden was dead in the water after Iowa, after New Hampshire, after Nevada. The open mockery was over the top. The open mockery during the 2020 campaign was over the top. The telling of doom on election night, over the top. The tales of doom over the next two years, over the top.
But no one's ever held accountable for underestimating Joe Biden these past few years. Nobody!
Note: there was also some blatant liberal-media bias in the ABC News headline reporting the bad news for Biden: "Trump edges out Biden 51-42 in head-to-head matchup: POLL."
Edges?? If Biden ever beat Trump by 9 points, ABC would trumpet it as an "epic landslide!"
And there there was the Washington Post, trying to downplay the importance of its own poll, casting it as an "outlier." As Nate Cohn of the New York Times wrote, in a post Halperin cited in his newsletter:
"I do have a fairly major quibble with ABC/Post here: if you release consecutive 'outlying' poll results -- R+7 in May, R+10 today -- you don't get to dismiss your results."
Joe Scarborough blasting people who wrote off Biden after his early primary losses in 2020, forgetting that he himself had written Biden's political obituary at the time, was sponsored in part by Consumer Cellular.
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
9/25/23
6:02 am EDTMIKA BRZEZINSKI: We have some major new polling in politics this morning.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Well, some crazy new polling.
MIKA: Yeah.
SCARBOROUGH: There, there, there ten points apart, the two polls that are out. So yeah, let's talk about it.
MIKA: Well, the new polling from NBC News shows that President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are deadlocked in a hypothetical 2024 election matchup.
. . .
Then the other new poll, this one from ABC News and the Washington Post, has Trump leading Biden by nine points in a 2024 election matchup. In this survey, the former president leads the current one 51% to 42% among all adults.
The Washington Post noted that this poll is likely an outlier compared to ones taken by other groups, but it is consistent with an ABC News/Washington Post poll of the same question from earlier this year.
. . .
SCARBOROUGH: So, I'm looking at these polls, Mika. Let's just talk here among ourselves for a second before we bring the guests in. We've talked about this a good bit through the years about Joe Biden.
MIKA: Yeah.
SCARBOROUGH: And I got, I got, sent, I think it was yesterday evening, Mark Halperin's newsletter, where there are different takes on it.
I want to read you one take.
MIKA: Okay.
SCARBOROUGH: and i t's pretty -- it's pretty consistent from, I guess, one of his experts.
And think about this. I can show you one expert after another mocking and ridiculing Joe Biden, the Democrats, for their strategy leading up to the 2022 midterm. The mockery for him talking about democracy and abortion was over the top. You should have heard them --and I'm not going to say people's names here -- the so-called truth tellers, they made fools of themselves mocking Democrats and Joe Biden and, as always, there was no blowback for underestimating Biden. They were proven wrong.
The irony of people attacking the press for not telling the truth, and then being willfully blind to all of their terrible predictions in 2020 and 2022 is pretty thick.
People said Biden was dead in the water after Iowa, after New Hampshire, after Nevada. The open mockery was over the top. The open mockery during the 2020 campaign was over the top. The telling of doom on election night, over the top. The tales of doom over the next two years, over the top.
But no one's ever held accountable for underestimating Joe Biden these past few years. Nobody!
And the people that look -- and I must say, that the people you look to as truth tellers are at the top of that list. They were wrong about Biden then.They are wrong about Biden now. They are wrong about Biden far more than they are right.
From Trumpers to progressives, to people who have made a lot of money in podcasts and newsletters being, quote, truth tellers, they have been dead wrong about Biden at the polls and dead wrong about Biden hammering out bipartisan legislation for three straight years. But no accountability, because they are truth tellers.
And Mika, it's true! I mean, you know, remember after Iowa?
MIKA: Yeah.
SCARBOROUGH: He was dead. Remember after New Hampshire?
MIKA: Mm-hmm.
SCARBOROUGH: Mocked, ridiculed, dead. After Nevada, there's no way he can come back. He wins South Carolina, he wins the nomination. We heard the same thing, he was too old.
. . .
I'm just telling you, maybe these polls are right. Well, they're not right. It's not nine points. Morning Joe betting syndicate will take all of your bets right now. Like, if you, if you want to take the plus nine on Joe Biden, yeah, no. Biden's not going to lose by nine points.
Thia is a close race! And there are warning signs there. I will say, though, I'm a little tired of it. I'm a little tired of three years hearing about how Joe Biden is going to get crushed. He's going to get crushed in 2020. He and the Democrats are going to get crushed in 2022. There's going to be a red wave. There's no way he can pass bipartisan legislation. He passes more than anybody this century.
MIKA: Exactly.
SCARBOROUGH: And it just keeps going on and on.
