Joe Biden’s unscripted comments on filibuster reform at a CNN town hall appalled his most devoted supporters. At a time when the whole ball game for getting voting rights through Congress is getting Joe Manchin to revise his opposition to suspending the filibuster, Biden seemed to be siding with Manchin, and then some.

Was this some kind of too-clever-by-half bank shot, in which Biden signals respect for the Republicans, and allies himself with Manchin now, in order to have more influence with Manchin later on?

Biden’s reverie seemed all too genuine. Our colleague, Harold Meyerson, concludes that Biden is "simply still a creature of the Senate."

Yet what Biden actually said wasn’t all that bad, just muddled. He indicated that the filibuster has a long history of abuse as a Jim Crow relic, that he had previously supported a return to the "talking filibuster," and then delivered this impossible-to-parse sentence: "There’s no reason to protect it other than you’re going to throw the entire Congress into chaos, and nothing will get done."

Say what? Critics pounced on this as indicating Biden’s die-hard support for keeping the filibuster—which is one way of reading it. But mainly, Biden’s intent was murky and his words ill chosen.

What we have, gentle reader, is another case of the Biden Blurt. Our president did the same thing when he almost upset a carefully balanced applecart that was carrying the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Biden blurted out the tacit deal that Democrats would commit to supporting the bipartisan half-loaf now and come back for the rest in reconciliation.

That could have led Republicans to walk away from the deal. The staff managed to walk that back and contain the damage.

In our great enthusiasm for Biden’s mostly superb appointments and his embrace of an agenda far more progressive than anyone dared hope, we tend to forget Biden’s long-standing weakness for unfortunate ad-lib blurts when he goes off script. I’m not even sure this is the result of his age—he has been doing this for decades.

Happily, Biden has a superb senior staff, and they run a very tight ship. How to say this kindly and politely? (There is no good way.) Good people on Biden’s staff: Please work a little harder to limit the impromptu opportunities and keep Der Alte on script.