The Democrats apparently have their candidate. But they did not settle on Joe Biden; they settled for Joe Biden. 

It was not that long ago that many in the mainstream media were writing off the Biden campaign and counting down the days until its end. CNN reminded its viewers that President Obama reportedly told Biden, “You don’t have to do this, Joe, you really don’t.” Pundits described the Biden campaign as “unsteady” and how Biden “isn’t a polished speaker anymore.” They questioned whether he “was up for this” in the upcoming campaign against his primary rivals — and eventually President Donald Trump. Despite recent descriptions of Biden as a phoenix rising and a comeback kid, those earlier observations about Biden and his campaign were correct then and remain correct now. 

Joe Biden is the same flawed candidate that he was a few short weeks ago. The only difference is that Democrats now have no other option to keep the nomination from Bernie Sanders. 

While former Democrat Chairwoman Donna Brazile may tell me to “go to hell,” it cannot be disputed that Democrats did everything they could to stop Sanders from getting their nomination. They changed their debate rules to allow Michael Bloomberg to participate in the Nevada and South Carolina debates, despite Bloomberg’s name not appearing on the ballot in either of those states. 

Once it became clear that Bloomberg’s billions couldn’t buy the Democrat nomination, much less the presidency, the Democrat establishment reluctantly returned to the candidate they had left for political dead weeks prior. The decision could not have been an easy one. For Democrats to rally behind Biden now, they must ignore the reason his campaign was on life support. Joe Biden was a bad candidate then, and he is a bad candidate now. 

Despite being the presumed front-runner for months, Biden was out-fundraised and out-organized by the former mayor of the fourth-largest city in Indiana. Joe Biden often forgets where he is, recently told voters in South Carolina that he was running for the U.S. Senate, and has even had trouble recalling President Obama’s name. He lies about his past and forgets or confuses basic historic facts, such as the end of the Declaration of Independence or his statement that he negotiated the horrible 2016 Paris Climate Agreement with former Chinese Premier Deng Xiaoping, who left office in 1992 and died in 1997. 

To make matters worse for Democrats, they settled for Biden but didn’t get any separation from Bernie’s radical policies out of the deal. Both Biden and Bernie support programs that would disrupt and eliminate private health insurance for millions of Americans, provide taxpayer funded health care for illegal immigrants, require trillions of dollars in tax increases, eliminate millions of blue-collar jobs, open the borders to criminal illegal immigrants, allow taxpayer-funded abortion without limits, and confiscate legally owned guns from law-abiding Americans.   

In addition, Biden will have to defend his family getting rich off his public service, his support for trade deals such as NAFTA and TPP — which labor unions hated for sacrificing the jobs and interests of American workers — and the discriminatory crime bill he helped write in the 1990s that resulted in millions of black Americans being locked up. 

Biden has performed miserably on the debate stage with his fellow Democrats, and recent reports suggesting he needs to be seated during a one-on-one debate with Bernie Sanders should cause Democrats to question how he could possibly hold up in a debate against President Trump. 

Add it all up and one conclusion becomes strikingly clear, Joe Biden didn’t win the Democrat nomination; he is the party’s consolation candidate because his name isn’t Bernie. Settling for a flawed nominee has never worked well for Democrats — just ask Walter Mondale, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton.