THE BRAIN FARTS JUST KEEP ON COMING.

On the transcript, it reads like a perfectly normal press conference.

Allison Harris, please.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Speaking of voting rights legislation, if this isn’t passed, do you still believe the upcoming election will be fairly conducted and its results will be legitimate?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, it all depends on whether or not we’re able to make the case to the American people that some of this is being set up to try to alter the outcome of the election. And it’s one thing — look, maybe I’m just being too much of an optimist. Remember how we thought not that many people were going to show up to vote in the middle of a pandemic? We had the highest voter turnout in the history of the United States of America.

Well, I think if, in fact — no matter how hard they make it for minorities to vote, I think you’re going to see them willing to stand in line and — and defy the attempt to keep them from being able to vote. I think you’re going to see the people who they’re trying to keep from being able to show up, showing up and making the sacrifice that needs to make in order to change the law back to what it should be.

And — but it’s going to be difficult. I make no bones about that. It’s going to be difficult. But we’re not there yet. We’ve not run out of options yet. And we’ll see how this moves.

Watch this clip, or the first few questions once the coot finished reading his statement, and tell me I wasn't being harsh last week.

REPORTER: "Do you still believe the upcoming election will be fairly conducted and the results will be legitimate?"

BIDEN: "It all depends depends on whether or not we're able to make the case to the American people that some of this is being set up to alter the outcome..." pic.twitter.com/COdhiTEYhh

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) January 19, 2022

Powerline's Scott Johnson described the ordeal as "a senile phantasmagora" and his post embeds all two hours of the show, should you wish to relive the horror.

Biden rambled, blundered, lied, dissembled, and streamed his consciousness like Molly Bloom in the last chapter of Ulysses or Benjy Compson in the first chapter of The Sound and the Fury. He searched his notes for talking points. He lost his train of thought, such as it was. He put his senile phantasmagoria on display for all to see. Does he have more than 26 cards to deal from his deck? It was appalling.

And all in service of firing up that docked tail of self-styled progressives.

Biden and his party have painted themselves into a rhetorical corner by endlessly comparing the modest voting reforms in Texas and Georgia to Jim Crow. If you’re going to go that route in hopes of demagoging Manchin and Sinema and getting your base juiced to vote in November, you’re necessarily committing yourself to arguing that an election held under the auspices of those laws is illegitimate. There’s no such thing as a “fair election” in a Jim Crow system, after all. This is another example of the White House’s embarrassing strategic shortsightedness, committing to a Trumpy position on election integrity in service to a legislative push that was all but guaranteed to fail. It would have been malignant but understandable if they had gone crazy with the Jim Crow analogies because they had reason to believe that doing so might flip the two Dem holdouts from no to yes on nuking the filibuster. But to go crazy with them knowing that the reforms they sought weren’t going to happen is political and civic malpractice. It’s inflammation for the sake of inflammation.

It's almost as if the major parties are less interested in expanding their appeal than in containing their opponents' appeals.

The President of the United States says that whether or not he'll respect or trust the outcome of the midterm elections in which his party is expected to suffer significant losses just "depends" because someone might try to alter the outcome, but if his election power-grab passes, then there's no issue?

Yes, we can play that fill-in-the-blank game with both major parties, but when the Leader of the Free World who ran on a platform of Unify the People No Mean Tweets plays the game, that can't be good.

After all, it is something of a mortal sin to those on the left when someone questions the results or methodology of an election. Like most other things, that rule of course only applies to Republican doubts. Democrats have a track record of doubting GOP victories at the ballot box, one that began long before Donald Trump ever ran for office.

It's not as if people aren't on to the con.

So, elections were secure, fair, and legitimate when Trump was president, but won’t be secure, fair, or legitimate unless the Democrats’ voting legislation is passed.

In other words, elections are only secure, fair, and legitimate when Democrats win.

As Twitchy's Brett T. quips, "Nice to know the man who won the presidency with 81 million votes is concerned about voter suppression keeping Democrats from winning."  Nothing like getting the excuses in order now in case the campaigns later, when normal people are paying attention, don't end well for your side.

That is, if all the wrangling over process doesn't antagonize the Normals.

If you dislike the laws governing elections, of course, you're free to try to change them. That's exactly what Democrats are trying to do with their various reform proposals in Congress—and what Republicans are trying to do in various state capitals. There will always be debates over the proper way to conduct elections, but declaring marginal changes in either direction to be so far out of bounds that they render entire elections illegitimate is accomplishing nothing except eroding the actual legitimacy of the democratic system.

If the wrangling is primarily over the outcome of the presidential elections, the country might pull through. Morale Conditioners from both major parties have noted that turnout, and House voting, seem not to be tainted.  So, too, let it be with school boards and highway commissions.