Joe Biden’s Malaise Speech

I joked last night that this presidential social-media post was the modern equivalent of Jimmy Carter’s address on the “Crisis of Confidence” afflicting the country, what posterity remembers as his “malaise speech.” But the more I think about it, the less it resembles a joke:

At the risk of overinterpreting what is, on its face, a rote display of sympathy for the depressed alongside a popular Muppet, it’s also hard to avoid the impression that this self-affirmation’s targets are the depressives currently populating the White House.