Everyone has come to expect gaffes from him
“Oh, that’s just Joe. If he talks long enough he will put his foot in his mouth.” Many who have ever listened to him have come to this and similar conclusions about Biden.
It is a case of expecting the ridiculous and getting the ridiculous from Biden. But a lack of the element of surprise felt by the observer when Biden makes one of these mistakes seems to actually work for the 77-year-old in the greater scheme of things.
Biden has become impervious to any further critique, masterfully dulling elaborate and deliberate focus on one particular gaffe or another. The gaffes have become a trade in stock for a man whose retail politics and folksiness is equaled by very few in the American political arena.
In a rather weird way, Biden’s “success” with his gaffes is not very different from the stubborn meanness of Donald Trump.