It’s tempting to laugh at the intervention of an actor in politics (although, for National Review fans, it shouldn’t be). But I think George Clooney’s op-ed in the New York Times today — headlined “I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee” — could help Democrats steel themselves for the hard work of the next few weeks. Clooney writes, “It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago” wasn’t the Biden of a few years ago but “the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”
Clooney is a donor to the Democratic Party and an important invitee to Hollywood fundraisers. He has flirted with the idea of getting into politics himself. But the problem for Democrats has been a peculiar one. The public at large has already concluded that Joe Biden is too old to be president. A vast majority of Democrats felt this way before the debate. Many would still vote for him, if only to stop Trump. But their concern has been obvious for years now. No, the problem is that the elite of the Democratic Party — which includes the intelligentsia at our sense-making institutions: news media, academia, and broadcasting — all live by a superstition that if they stick together on the same narrative, everything counter to that narrative becomes “disinformation” and non-credible. It’s an “emperor really does have clothes” metaphysics that rules their institutions.
That’s why I would not underestimate the power that George Clooney has when he breaks the taboo and says, “It’s okay to admit into evidence what you can plainly see with your own eyes.”