Last week, when American TV figure Bill Maher tried to defend US President Joe Biden amid criticism of him being incapable of running for the Oval Office was rife, he said, “He’s not a vegetable, he’s not crazy, he can still think”.
That’s when commentator Ben Shapiro, seated across the table, interjected with a quip that had the live audience in stitches. “Between certain hours,” said Shapiro.
It now seems that one vegetable has outlasted a politician, referred to as a vegetable, at least on Polymarket, a popular betting-cum-prediction site.
Polymarket put up a bet: Would a lettuce head outlast Joe Biden?
The bet started on July 19 as the pressure was mounting on Biden to step aside as the Democratic Presidential candidate from all quarters.
A lettuce head’s shelf life is usually 10 days. So, Biden just had to do that to beat the lettuce head, hang around for 10 days as the Democratic frontrunner as the presidential candidate.
On Sunday, President Biden announced he would not be running in the 2024 US Presidential race, putting an end to an online poll speculating whether he would outlast a head of lettuce in the campaign.
So, ‘lettus’ have a look at why Biden was referred to as a “vegetable” and who won the bet — Biden or the lettuce head.
BIDEN CALLED A ‘VEGETABLE’ AND A ‘LETTUCE HEAD’
Ever since Joe Biden entered the 2024 US presidential race for re-election, he has been disparagingly referred to as a “vegetable”.
As Biden continued to make public gaffes, the slang used to describe someone so severely impaired mentally or physically that they are largely incapable of conscious responses gained traction on social media.
Reacting to Sunday’s biggest development of Joe Biden bowing out of the Presidential race, American businessman Dave Portnoy called the sitting President a “lettuce head” and a “vegetable”, according to The Daily Mail.
Portnoy said Biden had been a “lettuce head for years”.
The term has been repeatedly used to criticise Biden, who many claimed had shown signs of being unfit for the Oval Office run. The term has also been used to attack Biden’s various policies in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election in the US.
In 2022, British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who served a brief 49-day term, found herself the subject of a satirical comparison to the shelf life of a lettuce.
LETTUCE OUTLIVES JOE BIDEN
Fast-forward to the current “Lettuce vs Biden” bet, and history has repeated itself. A similar comparison wrapped Biden up too. A prediction on betting portal Polymarket attracted many.
The premise was simple. Given the shelf life of a head of lettuce is approximately 10 days, would Joe Biden be able to outlast the lettuce?
The bet, which began on July 19, was part of a larger trend on Polymarket, which allows users to bet on a wide range of real-life events, including politics, sports, and cryptocurrency.
“This market will resolve to ‘Lettuce’ if President Joe Biden officially announces his withdrawal or is confirmed to have withdrawn from the 2024 US presidential race by July 28, 2024, 11.59 PM ET. Otherwise, this market will resolve to ‘Biden’,” the rules section on the poll noted on Polymarklet.
The bet started with both Lettuce and Biden even at 49:51. The bets then showed that the chances of Lettuce winning against Biden dipped to 41% before climbing to 78%. The odds kept swinging.
However, Biden opted out of the Presidential race long before the expiry date of the lettuce, July 28. Biden announced his withdrawal from the presidential race on Sunday (July 22). It left many in Polymarket stunned and amused, as the lettuce emerged victorious.
The result, where lettuce eventually won, saw bets worth $107,137 being placed.
LETTUCE BEAT BRITISH LIZ TRUSS IN 2022
The “Lettuce vs Biden” bet, however, took on a life of its own, drawing parallels to a similar incident that occurred during the 2022 Liz Truss administration in the UK.
At that time, a British tabloid newspaper, The Daily Star, began a livestream of an iceberg lettuce next to a framed photograph of Truss, asking the audience whether Truss would be able to outlast the lettuce. The comparison likened the brevity of Truss’s prime ministership to the shelf life of a head of lettuce.
In the UK, the lettuce ultimately won the bet, as Truss resigned as prime minister in just 49 days, before the lettuce had wilted.
Like with Liz Truss, US President Joe Biden too couldn’t outlast a lettuce head, showing that sometimes in politics, even the seasoned ones have a shorter shelf life than seasonal vegetables.
