The fact that Joe Biden is a gaffe machine is well-known in Democratic and Republican circles alike, and in the past his allies usually laughed them off and chalked them up to just “Joe being Joe.”

But while his campaign surrogates have continued to grasp on to the “Joe being Joe” excuse in recent days after a series of high-profile flubs that happened over the course of a little over a week, some of his allies are panicking – and suggesting his appearances be cut back.

The Hill reports:

Biden has a tendency to make the blunders late in the day, his allies say, particularly after a long swing on the road, like he had last week in Iowa. They say something needs to be done to give the candidate more down time as the campaign intensifies in the fall.

“He needs to be a strong force on the campaign trail, but he also has to pace himself,” said one ally who has talked to members of the campaign team and others in the broader Biden World about how to move forward.

The ally said it was unclear whether the campaign would make any changes to Biden’s schedule, particularly because Biden was criticized recently for not doing as many events as his Democratic rivals.

[…]

Biden’s age — he’ll be 77 in November — has been seen by some as a liability ever since he launched his campaign earlier this year. While he has been billed by those around him as the most electable Democrat to take on President Trump next year, some wonder if he has the zeal to compete.

“A lot of people are nervous that he’s lost some of his mojo,” said one major Democratic donor. “They’re getting nervous about him going toe to toe with Trump. But the problem is, there doesn’t seem to be an alternative.”

Columnist Larry Elder compiled a short list of some of the gaffes Biden has made just this month:

“Those kids in Parkland came up to see me when I was vice president.” — Biden, Aug. 10, 2019. The Parkland shooting was a year after Biden left office.

“We choose unity over division. We choose science over fiction. We choose truth over facts.” — Biden, Aug. 8, 2019.

“Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.” — Biden, Aug. 8, 2019.

[…]

“You had people like Margaret Tha — excuse me. You had people like the former chairman and the leader of the party in Germany … Angela Merkel.” — Biden, Aug. 8, 2019, campaigning in Iowa.

Maybe some of them can be simply chalked up to Biden losing steam after a long day of campaigning, but the one about the Parkland students visiting him “when I was vice president” after the Parkland shooting is the one that stands out as the most troublesome. That’s not juts a flub, and it’s not merely a lie.

It suggests he can’t remember the dates he was vice president, and perhaps really believes that the students visited him in that capacity after the shooting. I don’t recall a mass shooting at a high school during the time he was vice president that would have precipitated a visit from some of the students in the aftermath, certainly not one he could have mixed up with the Parkland shootings.

In fact, the aggressive political activism of some of the students after the Parkland shootings happened was widely praised by the mainstream media at the time because it hadn’t been done before.

A couple of months ago, President Trump insinuated there might be a more troubling reason why President Obama was not outright endorsing his former veep for President that went beyond merely not wanting to show favoritism before the primaries even started.

After the series of gaffes committed by Biden earlier this month, CNN‘s Jake Tapper reported that even some Democrats were starting to be troubled by the former veep’s error-prone nature:

We’re starting to hear more Democrats publicly expressing doubts like this one about Biden. He’s been gaffe-prone for much of his career so presumably they think this is something else. https://t.co/jXXThBEryu

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) August 9, 2019

If Biden continues his gaffe streak, more people including Democrats are going to be openly speculating as to just what that “something else” might be.

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— Based in North Carolina, Sister Toldjah is a former liberal and a 15+ year veteran of blogging with an emphasis on media bias, social issues, and the culture wars. Read her Red State archives here. Connect with her on Twitter. –