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In the three bitter weeks since his disastrous debate defeat, President Joe Biden has desperately tried to convince Democrats that he is still their best hope.
He hasn’t done that. Every time it seems like Biden has finally closed the door, another wave of critics surges in and the cycle begins anew.
The most high-profile Democrat on Wednesday was Rep. Adam Schiff of California, who publicly called on Biden to step down. The day ended with a flurry of reports that party heavyweights including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had directly delivered harsh assessments to Biden in recent days about the president’s chances of winning.
Biden has repeatedly said he’s not going anywhere. Biden, who has shied away from the press more than his recent predecessors, has given two high-profile interviews and has been given many more since then. After the NATO summit, Biden held a nearly hour-long press conference. Not only that, Biden has been campaigning around the country.
“Joe Biden is his party’s nominee. He is President of the United States. He is seeking reelection. Unfounded speculation from anonymous sources is not a scoop,” Biden campaign spokesman TJ Ducklo wrote on Twitter in response to an Axios report that Biden would be persuaded to drop out. “Tonight you will hear a convicted felon talk about how people’s lives would be worse if he were in power. Stay focused.”
Biden’s deputy campaign manager, Quentin Fulks, told reporters that Biden’s campaign was fully focused on him being the nominee.
“The vice president is part of the Biden-Harris ticket,” Fulks told reporters on the sidelines of the Republican National Committee in Milwaukee. “Our campaign is not operating under a scenario in which President Biden is not at the top of the list.”
And yet it’s not enough, mainly because Biden got away with it. At worst, what was meant to reassure Democrats that he could campaign seriously instead provided more evidence that he is struggling. As Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who continues to back the president, told The New Yorker, Biden sometimes has trouble stringing together sentences.
In a string of recent tirades, Biden has called Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin a “nigger,” referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump” and referred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin.” Sometimes he’s quick to correct himself, but more often he’s at a loss for words.
Biden isn’t the only one struggling. Former President Donald Trump is having the best period of his campaign to date. Trump is riding the strongest approval ratings of any Republican presidential candidate in more than two decades. Biden’s supporters have portrayed him as weak for months, while Republicans have backed Trump’s defiant response to the assassination attempt.
This may have been an impossible task all along. Polls have long shown that Americans believe the oldest president in the country’s history is too old to be re-elected. And yet he did. Unfortunately for Biden, his frequent retort to those who doubt his ability to “just watch me” came true in the first debate, where more than 51 million Americans watched him struggle.
Democrats have pressed for a post-debate schedule, but the idea that Biden will suddenly return to his best isn’t going anywhere. Kobayashi MaruThere was no chance the president would win.
Biden’s best bet was to wait for the anger to die down. For now, he’s still cutting it off. Twenty Democrats have called on him to step down, less than 10% of all Democrats in Congress. Most importantly, Biden has the powerful Congressional Black Caucus on his side.
But top Democratic leaders aren’t entirely satisfied. According to Politico, Pelosi told Biden he was holding the party back. For the time being, Biden is staying in Delaware after testing positive for COVID-19.
Biden is truly a party loyalist, and now he must decide what to do as the movement to oust him gathers momentum.