No number of Tik-Toking grandchildren can save President Joe Biden's campaign following his "mythically catatonic performance at last week’s debate," a new opinion piece contends.
Slate staff writer Luke Winkie laid into the Bidens following a report in The New York Times that at least one of the commander-in-chief's grandchildren expressed interest in getting more involved to help his campaign, which has faced intense scrutiny from pundits, donors and some in the Democratic Party.
An "informed" source told the Times that the grandchild (or grandchildren) considered possibly talking to social media influencers.
Winkie scoffed at the notion.
"Ah, yes, of course. To resuscitate the incumbent’s flatlining campaign and eliminate his infirm image, we simply need to increase the quotient of Bidens involved in the race," he said. "What could go wrong!"
Acknowledging he's "not a campaign strategist," Winkie pointedly noted the idea is "evidence of an operation that is officially out of ideas." Joe is 81, after all and seems to have a limited capacity to interact with people without a teleprompter's guidance. The equation may be "unsolvable," he said.
And if it is salvageable, he asked what evidence shows other Bidens are the answer? Just two grandchildren have a social media presence and neither can speak on the matter with "any authority," he said.
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Hunter Biden's eldest daughter, Naomi, 30, has 191,000 Instagram followers and a presence that Winkie calls a "thoroughly anodyne influencer-lite scrapbook of tasteful bridal shots and DayGlo vacation envy."
Not a whiff of her political leanings.
"The Biden campaign is not going to be able to leverage snapshots of European beaches from a minor dynastic heir into electoral momentum, and God help it if it tries," writes Winkie.
Nor was Winkie pleased at the following suggestion:
"In order for Biden to remind the country that he is awake, lucid, and capable of walking from one end of the room to the other, perhaps he should break bread with Instagram influencers—maybe by doing the “Savage” dance on TikTok or some such thing."
And then there's Hunter's middle daughter Maisy. With just over 150,000 followers, the 23-year-old's top-pinned TikTok video shows her dancing in a Scooby-Doo onesie — evidence, WInkie argues, that she has no plans to rescue grandpa's project.
"The point here is that if you’ve hit the Maybe my grandchildren can salvage this run part of a campaign journey, it might be time to head toward the exit," Winkie wrote. "Joe Biden has long taken a friends-and-family approach to his political career, but this is a bridge too far."
He later adds: "Let’s ignore the input of the grandchildren before things get too embarrassing. Please. For all of our sake. If Joe Biden appears in the next oily Kylie Jenner thirst trap, I’m convinced he will lose by 400 electoral votes."
