NYT rushes to save Quid Pro Joe

As the impeachment bores on, Democrats are beginning to realize their bullets are bouncing off the the chest of President Donald John Trump and hitting front runner Joe Biden, because it is difficult to claim impropriety over delaying aid to Ukraine when your own man boasted about holding up a billion-dollar loan guarantee to Ukraine unless it stopped investigating his son, Hunter Biden.

Democrats thought they had cleared Biden when he staged a confrontation last month with a man in Iowa who called him out on his corruption. Biden called the man fat, dumb and a liar. For some reason, Biden challenged him to pushups.

But the impeachment has focused attention not on some phone call, but on the corruption by Biden and his son.

To defend this, Democrats have tried to extend kids-are-off-limits to a 49-year-old man. I cannot imagine much public sympathy for a man impregnating a stripper and then refusing to pay child support.

The New York Times today gamely tried to extinguish the flames of scandal in a piece headlined, "How Joe Biden Talks About a Touchy Subject: His Son.

"As he runs for president, Mr. Biden has repeatedly faced questions about the overseas business dealings of his son, Hunter Biden. He has mostly kept his cool — but not always."

In promoting the story on Twitter, Peter Baker of the New York Times tamped down the talking point, "Scrutiny of Hunter Biden poses a problem for his father: He presents himself as regular guy with working class roots but his son's lucrative overseas business strikes many as an insider deal typical of Washington."

The argument is after 44 years in the Senate and as vice president, Biden is still a workingman whose son is a successful businessman. Don't blame the player; blame the American dream.

That is a pretty good spin. The article never mentions his son's addiction to cocaine, the paternity lawsuit, child support, or the son travelling to Red China with Biden on Air Force Two, where Hunter Biden sealed a $1.5 billion deal.

But the Times (no links to pay sites) did lay out correctly the problem.

The newspaper said, "As the Senate impeachment trial of the president continues this week, there is renewed focus in Washington on Hunter Biden, who held a seat on the board of a Ukrainian energy company at a time when his father was vice president and handling diplomacy with the country.

"And Mr. Biden is no longer just dealing with questions about his son from hecklers: On Wednesday, he rejected the suggestion that he and his son testify in the trial in a swap for the testimony of current or former Trump administration officials, an idea raised by an attendee at an Iowa campaign event that has been dismissed by congressional Democrats. 'This is a constitutional issue, and we’re not going to turn it into a farce, into some kind of political theater,' Mr. Biden said."

The man is freaking out. He may be slow of wit and sliding into imbecility, but the sense of danger is one of the last to go.

The Super Delegates who will crown the party's presidential nominee are trying to save him. They selected Obama over Hillary, and then Hillary over Bernie later.

The Times reported, "'It’s a very personal issue,' said Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, who said Mr. Trump was 'an evil genius on the issue of trying to cut other people up, and cut them up this way.'"

Weingarten expressed the bottom line as "This is a dad defending his son."

Of course, this is also a dad who used his position on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and later as vice president to enrich his son -- as well as his brother and other family members.

The Times ignored that, and wrote, "In subtle and overt ways, the issue remains alive on the campaign trail — even among people who are sympathetic to Mr. Biden. In Centerville, Iowa, on Sunday, Mr. Biden’s wife, Jill Biden, was asked whether her family was prepared for an onslaught of attacks. She replied that the Bidens are resilient."

No such empathy has been given the Family Trump, which built its fortune through hard work as they built subdivisions, skyscrapers, and hotels.

We shall see how this plays out.

But to paraphrase the U.S. naval officer in World War II, Schiff is saying, "Saw sub, sank Biden."