Having spent five years nursing a mother in cognitive decline, I honestly do not see the tell-tale signs in Biden.
I see a man who is in his 80s. A man who was never verbally fluid and did not suddenly become more fluid now.
But I would really like to push against the accepted line that speed of comeback is any sort of asset in a leader.
We think the snappy, scathing comeback is a sign of intelligence and competence. It's not. It never has been. It's just been represented as such on TV.
Being able to read fluidly from a teleprompter is actually something people in cognitive decline find very hard to do. They tend to lose the thread of what they're reading.
Is it possible he's slowed down mentally some and they're hiding it? Yup. Sure. God knows they managed to hide Reagan's descent into dementia well, and the country didn't collapse.
But there's a significant difference between a stutter that gets more pronounced with age - hesitation, restatement - and the kind of word-mush that Trump falls into quite frequently. #Biden#Trump