As Election Day fast approaches, the right wing seems to have run aground in its attempts to character assassinate Joe Biden.
In absence of anything of substance with which to spin a scandal, Biden's opponents seem to have settled upon mocking Biden for seeming to be a good father, an approach that has left many scratching their heads.
This tactic reached a new level of absurd yesterday when conservative pundit John Cardillo made a bizarre attempt to sexualize an affectionate photo of Biden and his son Hunter, and Twitter all but melted down in response.
In the tweet, which features a black and white photo of Biden embracing and kissing his son on the cheek, Cardillo added a caption that posed an innuendo-laden question:
"Does this look like an appropriate father/son interaction to you?"
Cardillo's calculation seems to have been that when a Democrat is leading in the polls by a double-digit margin and substantive policy arguments against him are hard to come by, the next best move is to imply the Democrat wants to have gay sex with his son.
While certainly the most bizarre, Cardillo's tweet was only the latest example of what has come to seem like an outright obsession on the right with Joe Biden's fatherly relationship with Hunter.
Previously, right-wing pundits and media outlets attempted to spin supposedly leaked photographs of Hunter and text messages between him and the former Vice President during Hunter's time in rehab into a something meant to be embarrassing for the former Vice President.
The move backfired--partly because the leak itself seemed to many news outlets to have been faked in the first place--but also because it accomplished the exact opposite of what was intended: an image of Joe Biden as a father dedicated to loving and supporting his son unconditionally during his darkest hour.
On Twitter, Cardillo's bizarre gambit inspired a similar level of outrage, mockery and headscratching.
The Right's bizarre gambits to paint dedicated fatherhood as a weakness haven't seemed to work.
Though it has tightened slightly, the newest round of nationwide polling reveals a race in which Biden is ahead of Donald Trump by an average of 10 percentage points.
