Editing this to show—this is not what happened, but don’t want to dishonestly retract my predictions!

Why I think Biden will probably do better than expected in the debate.

There’s a lot of dispute about who is going to win the upcoming debate between Trump and Biden. Many picture a geriatric, forgetful Biden being impaled in a nightmare debate—others picture Trump rambling incoherently and Biden sounding reasonable. My guess: Biden will do better than expected but not by much.

Biden isn’t where he used to be, as anyone who has been following him for a while can easily see (just compare his devastating takedown of Paul Ryan or Sarah Palin to his 2020 debates). That said, Biden is still decently competent, seeming to run things fine as president of the United States.

Lots of people seem to think that Biden is severely dementia addled and his brain has turned to mush. I think that, while Biden’s eloquence has declined a lot more than Trump’s has, this is overblown. Biden stutters a lot and slurs his words, and occasionally goes off on bizarre and confusing rambles—as he often did in the past—but he’s not delusional in the way that selectively edited clips surfacing on right-wing Twitter tend to portray him being.