Rich and the gang take a good hard look at Biden’s Wednesday night speech on this Friday edition of The Editors.

The president, while talking about the (decidedly awful) attack on Paul Pelosi, made it a highly partisan issue, Michael points out: “He didn’t say anything about the guy who tried to stab Lee Zeldin, the New York Republican gubernatorial nominee, earlier this year.” Unfortunately, “clearly . . . the standard only runs one way.”

Never one to let an Irish reference go to waste, Michael makes a striking comparison between the politics of that country and ours, saying that, “in this way, American politics becomes a little bit like politics in Belfast, where everybody remembers the atrocities they want to remember, and not the ones that can be on their side.”

As for the delivery of the speech itself, Michael found it unmoving. “It was notably lifeless. . . . I think Biden’s political fate is sealed with this speech. . . . The theme of this speech will serve only two purposes: to demoralize Democrats after the election results come in. . . . The other thing it will do is feed conspiracy-theorizing and despair after next week.”

This is not the first time Biden has given this “democracy is dead” speech, but why did he give it again? Charlie has a guess: “I think it is a combination of elite monomania on this topic, and a really poor hand. What can you say if you’re Biden? You can’t say things are good — they’re not. You can’t say you’ve been relentlessly focused on fixing them, because you haven’t. You can’t talk about the spending bills that you’ve shepherded through, because people blame those for inflation. You can’t say that you’ve enforced the border, because you haven’t. You can’t say — and of course, there’s a limited federal role here anyway — that you’ve helped reduced crime.”

Biden has decided to fall back on what got him elected in the first place: He’s not Trump. “But Donald Trump is not on the ballot,” Charlie reminds us, “so they’re stretching.”

Unfortunately for Democrats, they just don’t seem to get it. “I think it’s a combination of not having a great deal to sell,” Charlie continues, “and believing falsely that this is what people care about, or that it’s relevant in a midterm election — it’s not.”

Our panelists also have plenty to say about the news of a possible Trump presidential run in 2024, and about Musk’s new Twitter reign. Listen below for the rest.