With the fate of his own reelection campaign hanging in the balance, President Biden held a crucial press conference at NATO’s Washington summit on Thursday night.
The incident came just two weeks after a disastrous debate performance in Atlanta that sent Democrats into panic and led many to call for the president to step down, a crisis that Biden has yet to overcome.
The press conference was an hour-long tightrope walk.
Advisers had hoped Biden would reassure the party with a performance that showed he was in charge on the world stage; another stall would surely have meant the end of his campaign.
In the end, neither extreme opinion was addressed at the press conference.
The biggest points are:
One gaffe could erase Biden’s good moment
The entire press conference was pretty much what everyone expected from Biden on such an occasion, at least before the June 27 debate debacle.
The president displayed both his experience and his age, speaking forcefully at times and evasively at others, reminding audiences that he is not only up to speed on world affairs but that he has been in public office for a long time. As he does, he recounted his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in the 1970s.
But the danger for Biden is that one embarrassing gaffe could overshadow the entire event.
In his first response during the question and answer session, Biden said “Vice President Trump” when he clearly meant “Vice President Harris.”
The moment went viral, and it was made worse when, at an earlier event on Thursday, Biden referred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin” before later correcting himself.
He said “Vice President Trump,” and did not correct himself.
The gaffe was quickly picked up by former President Trump on his social media accounts, who sarcastically wrote, “Nice job, Joe!”
Soon after, Biden’s official X account posted a message saying, “Yes, we know the difference. [between Trump and Harris]”One is a prosecutor and the other is a felon.”
The danger for Biden is that this mistake, combined with the Putin affair, will shatter the image of competence he was so keen to project.
Biden has neither assuaged nor destroyed Democratic fears
Predictions about Biden’s chances of winning are changing daily.
Earlier this week, a belated counterattack from the Biden campaign appeared to put Biden in a more stable position.
The tide then turned with half-hearted comments from former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in an interview with MSNBC, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) predicting on CNN that Biden would lose, and intervention from Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vermont), the first sitting Democratic senator to publicly call for Biden to resign.
There was nothing at the press conference that would decisively save Biden or, conversely, seal his fate.
His next big event is an interview with NBC News scheduled for Monday.
No one knows how the party will fare in the meantime. There are rumors that more Democrats may turn against Biden now that the NATO summit is over.
Almost as soon as the press conference ended, CNN reported that Speaker Pelosi and former President Barack Obama were discussing what to do about Biden, as his chances of re-election appear to be dimming.
The president praised the vice president.
If Biden is forced to drop out of the 2024 presidential race, Harris is undoubtedly the leading candidate to succeed him.
That put the president in the awkward position of having to answer questions exploring whether he thought she might be a more formidable challenger to Trump.
Biden was enthusiastic about praising Harris, saying at one point, “I’ve been very clear from the beginning: She is qualified to be president.”
Biden wants to keep Harris on his side, and praising her is politically wise given that her endorsement has proven valuable to Biden over the past two weeks.
On the other hand, his enthusiastic support for her does not entirely erase the notion among Democrats that the Democratic Party might be better off choosing her as the party’s standard-bearer.
Biden doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
Biden remains adamant that he is not dropping out of the race.
Of course, he doesn’t have much of a choice but to suddenly step aside completely, and if he wants to survive he can’t appear to be dwelling too deeply on his weaknesses.
Still, he stuck to his guns Thursday: “We’re just going to keep moving forward,” he said, and he also argued that the campaign still has a long way to go, capitalizing on public distrust in the polls.
The idea of continuing to work hard is at least consistent with his self-image as a gritty “Scranton Joe,” though some Democrats worry he may be letting that role go off a cliff.
Biden acknowledged he needed to “pace himself.”
But when asked if he would consider dropping out of the race if his team presented “data” that showed Harris had a better chance against Trump, Biden said: “I wouldn’t consider it unless they came back and said, ‘You have no chance of winning.'”
“The polls don’t say that,” he argued.
Still, some key figures in Democratic politics feel Trump is optimistic about the situation.
“If what he said at the end of the press conference is true, it appears the Biden campaign wasn’t very honest with him about what the data is showing. The age issue is a huge, possibly insurmountable, concern that makes his chances of winning very slim,” former President Barack Obama adviser David Axelrod wrote on social media.
Unpleasant surprise shows Biden’s challenges remain
Biden gave a good enough performance at the press conference, but his challenges were highlighted immediately after it ended.
Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) became the 15th House Democrat to publicly call on the president to drop out of the race.
Himes praised Biden’s lifetime of public service, but added that Democrats need “the strongest candidate possible” for an election that could “define the future of American democracy.”
“I no longer believe that it’s Joe Biden,” Himes added.
Shortly thereafter, Rep. Eric Sorensen (D-Ill.) made a similar call.
Of course, the opinions of Himes and Sorensen are not conclusive on their own, but their dissent is a reminder that Biden faces a real and immediate risk of losing his party’s support and making it impossible for him to maintain his position.
