Joe Biden continues to stumble on the campaign trail now that he’s come out of hiding.

In just the past few days, he’s made several headline producing gaffes. One involved Biden saying there were “at least three genders” when asked about it by a college student. That’s an answer that makes no sense to either the right or the left when it comes to the issue. Just a day before, he remarked in a speech that “poor kids are just as bright and talented as white kids,” a verbal slip that earned him scorn from all sides.

He’s somehow managed to top those.

Yesterday, Biden made the inexplicable, false claim that Parkland students visited him in the White House as Vice President.

Biden told reporters in Iowa on Saturday that “those kids in Parkland came up to see me when I was vice president.” https://t.co/QiWHMCI8uo

— Emma Kinery (@EmmaKinery) August 10, 2019

It’s one thing to say something you didn’t mean to say. You can even understand when politicians exaggerate or claim to be a bigger part of an event than they were. That’s not good, but it’s fairly standard fare unfortunately. This isn’t that. It’s a completely made up, fake memory of something that clearly didn’t happen.

This isn’t a verbal slip or a normal gaffe — this is a completely false memory. https://t.co/UU6Q5rdZfk

— JERRY DUNLEAVY (@JerryDunleavy) August 10, 2019

You can’t just chalk this up to forgetfulness. Listen to how detailed he gets while trying to pander about gun control.

Biden told reporters in Iowa on Saturday that “those kids in Parkland came up to see me when I was vice president.” But when they visited Capitol Hill to talk with members of Congress, lawmakers were “basically cowering, not wanting to see them. They did not want to face it on camera.”

In reality, by the time the Parkland shooting took place, Biden had not been Vice President for well over a year.

While conservatives can poke fun at this, the real concern here is for Democrats. There’s a growing movement within the primary opposing Joe Biden, not because of his policy ideas, but because he can’t seem to go more than twelve hours without saying something confusing. The issue isn’t so much that he’s making things up, as that’s par for the course for politics. It’s that he appears so mentally out it when making these claims and gaffes.

If Elizabeth Warren or Donald Trump make a statement that’s misleading, you at least know they are doing it on purpose. With Biden, you are left wondering whether he’s actually going senile. How long can he keep this up? We are nearly six months from just the first primary. We are well over a year out from the 2020 election itself. He’s been on the campaign trail for what amounts to just several weeks at this point given how little actual campaigning he did in the first few months of his candidacy.

Democrats are going to have to make a choice. On paper, Biden continues to be the more formidable opponent to Donald Trump. But elections aren’t run on paper and Biden’s continued struggles are mounting.

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