Would you look at that, a poll totally not contrived for the purpose of blogging my own opinion.

Hur criticizing Biden is the system working as intended. Hur was appointed by Garland, whom Biden appointed. If, as team Biden keeps saying, Hur is a partisan hack, Biden should have appointed an AG who wouldn't appoint partisan hacks. I've been mocking Trump voters for the past three years about how judges that Trump appointed ruled against his election lawsuits, the same arguments I used there could be recycled to criticize Biden.

Democracy depends on an independent judicial system. All that happened was Hur was given liberty to say the obvious. There have been several octogenarians in my personal life whose wisdom I cherish, but I'd be lying if I said I knew a single person over the age of seventy (let alone eighty) who possessed the cognitive energy to be president. I don't see anything suspicious in this report. It's frustrating to see the Democratic party apparatus fail to step in and tell Biden it's time to step down, especially since the window for an actual primary race to occur has long since closed.

I of course welcome contrary opinions. My first impression rarely stands up to scrutiny.

@VerySeriousPoster Biden is old and more confused that he was before, which problem will get worse with his age. He never should have run again. Which doesn't mean we may not have to vote for him anyway, but it was a very selfish act.

@FrederickNorris Yeah, I'm no fan of betraying the good for the perfect. Really at this point the president only has strong sway over foreign policy and judicial appointments, since every conceivable executive order has already been made and congress can't do anything*. There's not the slightest temptation in my mind to prefer Trump on those issues.

Still though, it's hard to not see this race (which basically nobody wants) as a failure of the political system. Getting frustrated about it doesn't fix anything though, which is why I'm trying to focus more on local issues.

*Chips, the IRA, and build back better are obvious exceptions. Still, I have my doubts as to how much of that was Biden and how much of it was democratic senators pulling out the plans they'd been sitting on for a while. He might've done some personal bargaining with Manchin, but I don't know how much of that was just for show.