Biden's Cancer Promise Crumbles as America Remembers Who Obama's 'Cancer Czar' Was
Sometimes, even the mainstream media recognizes “malarkey” when it sees it. Most Americans sure do.
And the Joe Biden presidential campaign might be finding that out.
Former Vice President Joe Biden is no stranger to running off at the mouth, a fact familiar to anyone who has paid attention to politics since Richard Nixon was in the White House.
On the campaign trail in Ottumwa, Iowa, on Tuesday, the loquacious Biden went so far even the liberal Huffington Post was skeptical: He promised that if he is elected president, the country is going to “cure cancer.”
Biden’s own son, Beau, died of brain cancer in 2015, and the memory of that experience clearly came through in Biden’s statement.
“A lot of you understand what loss is and when loss occurs, you know that people come up to you and tell you ‘I understand’ if you lose a husband, a wife, a son, a daughter, a family member,” he said, according to USA Today.
Fair enough. But then he jumped the shark.
“That’s why I’ve worked so hard in my career to make sure that — I promise you if I’m elected president, you’re going to see the single most important thing that changes America, we’re gonna cure cancer.”
As Biden himself might put it, that would be a “big f—ing deal.”
Unfortunately for Biden and the Democrats who see him as their best chance for beating President Donald Trump come Nov. 3, 2020, it’s also almost guaranteed not to happen during a potential Biden presidency — or any other in the foreseeable future.
And no one should know that better than Biden himself who was designated in 2016 by then-President Barack Obama as a kind of “cancer czar” to head up the country’s “moonshot” against cancer.
“Because he’s gone to the mat for all of us on so many issues over the past 40 years, I’m putting Joe in charge of Mission Control,” Obama said in his 2016 State of the Union address.
The idea was to marshal the might of the United States toward finding a cure for cancer the way the government focused the technological resources of the country toward landing a man on the moon in the 1960s. The difference, as astute readers will note, is that American astronauts actually landed on the moon in 1969.
Cancer, unfortunately, in myriad different forms, is still with us, and it will be regardless of who gets elected president in 2020.
The mainstream media must have recognized Biden’s “we’re gonna cure cancer” line as the gibberish it was.
It hasn’t gotten anywhere the kind of mocking, sarcastic coverage it deserved — or that a similar grandiose statement by Trump would have drawn. But at least the largest news outlets didn’t treat it as a selling point for the Democratic candidate.
And by the low standards of what pretends to be journalism in 21st century America, that passes for progress.
Social media, however, lit up at Biden’s ill-advised words.
Joe Biden fixed his own baldness. It’s insane to think he can’t cure cancer.
— Nate’s Liver (@SilERabbit) June 11, 2019
Me: Democrats promise tons of impossible hand-outs, but at least they’ve never fully jumped the shark and said they’d cure cancer…
Joe Biden: pic.twitter.com/24RU3nh3Xk
— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) June 12, 2019
Biden: Ok everyone, how do we cure cancer?
Scientists: You know we’ve been working on this for quite some time now right?
Biden: Ok cool, so I really need you to finish soon. I made some promises https://t.co/ZUIFLxQR0F
— Utah A&M (@Utah_AM) June 11, 2019
Cheap, shooting-fish-in-the-barrel jokes aside, there is at least one serious reason to say what Biden is promising now is impossible — simply because the catchall term “cancer” does not describe an individual situation.
As Kevin Williamson pointed out in the National Review back in 2016, there are many forms of cancer – and they keep changing.
“Cancer is unlikely to be ‘cured’ for the same reason that crime will never be eradicated: adaptation,” Williamson wrote.
(In the same column, presciently titled “No, Joe Biden Isn’t Going to Cure Cancer,” Williamson pointed out that the then-vice president not only wouldn’t cure cancer, Biden “couldn’t find chlamydia backstage at a Mötley Crüe concert.” That’s priceless.)
Or as another Twitter user put it:
As a former cancer czar, Joe Biden must know that cancer isn’t one disease with a single cure. Why is he talking like this?
— Lindsay Beyerstein (@beyerstein) June 11, 2019
In short, Biden’s vow to cure cancer in Iowa on Tuesday crumbled immediately, not only on its own preposterous weight but also by virtue of the fact that Biden himself was already in charge of an alleged all-out effort by the government against cancer when he was in office.
Has anyone heard we’re on the verge of curing cancer since then?
America remembers that. The mainstream media remembers that. Biden remembers that.
And it’s one more moment when Joe Biden is full of malarkey.
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