What can we say to move you, Joe? A growing number of Democrats, elected officials and rank-and-file voters alike, are asking this question as the crisis over Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy, which began with his dismal performance in the Atlanta debate, deteriorates into a war of attrition.
Last Thursday, the president’s fate seemed to be in dire straits, as members of Congress abandoned him, senators poured out their deepest fears to White House staff in tearful meetings, and even the president’s own aides and advisers explained to reporters that he should step aside.
Biden then held an extraordinary news conference at the conclusion of NATO’s 75th anniversary summit in Washington. Apart from the now-half-expected gaffe in which he referred to Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump” (after introducing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin”), the feared Atlanta-style disaster did not materialize. Instead, the 81-year-old Biden seemed to be fooled by his advanced age, detailing his foreign policy with an authority that Donald Trump could never comprehend, even if his thoughts trailed off mid-thought.
As a result, the president is now locked in a battle of wills with key members of his party, and the movement to remove him from office and avert a potentially devastating election defeat ultimately comes down to a question of who has stronger convictions.
Campaigning in the key battleground state of Michigan on Friday, Biden made his determination clear and recalled scenes worthy of a Trump rally.
“They attack me because I sometimes get my name wrong. I say Charlie, not Bill,” Biden said at a rally in Detroit, blaming the media for his predicament. “But guess what? Donald Trump got absolved.”
His attack drew boos from the crowd, some of whom pointed accusingly at reporters watching, in a scene that closely resembled Trump’s. The New York Times Meanwhile, mentions of Trump, the presumptive Republican opponent, have reportedly elicited chants of “lock him up” similar to those aimed at Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign.
The scene unfolded after Rep. Mike Levin, a Democrat from California, became the first member of his party to tell Biden face-to-face during an online meeting with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus that he should step aside and “pass the baton.” Biden remained unfazed, saying that if polls show most voters believe he is too old to serve or beat Trump, “touch me, poke me, ask me questions.”
“I think I know what I’m doing, because the truth is, and I’m going to say something crazy, no president other than Franklin Roosevelt has ever accomplished what we’ve accomplished in the last three years,” he said. Reportedly.
With just over a month until the Democratic National Convention, where will Democrats go in the face of this stubbornness?
The default answer, according to Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, may be to expect the worst as a way of hoping for the best. That means waiting for Biden to experience another debacle reminiscent of the debate fiasco during a series of public appearances in which he promises to restore his credibility.
“I asked one senator what further pressure he could apply, and he replied, ‘That’s all we can do unless another incident occurs,'” Sabato said. “Do we freeze at the podium or start chattering? This senator correctly pointed out that Trump has done the exact same thing many times and gotten away with it, but Biden now can’t get away with it – and he’s gotten himself punished.”
Another imagined scenario, widely touted but by no means inevitable, is that party elders would come to the White House and try to convince Biden to step aside for the broader good, much like how Republican heavyweights told Richard Nixon in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal in 1974 that he would be impeached if he didn’t resign.
There is speculation that similar measures could be taken with Biden. “Perhaps some of Biden’s contemporaries – Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, John Kerry – will go to the White House and say, ‘Look at your party, look at yourself. We can’t continue like this,'” said veteran US pollster John Zogby.
Without such dramatic symbolism, he argued, Democrats would face the “daunting task” of persuading Biden to relinquish the political prize he coveted and prepared for over a half-century of public service.
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Elsewhere, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 84, and former President Barack Obama have reportedly discussed their concerns privately, with Obama apparently being informed in advance by Democratic fundraiser leader George Clooney about an opinion piece the actor wrote for Republican lawmakers. The New York Times They called on the president to stop campaigning, but did nothing to stop it.
In a dramatic report after Biden’s NATO press conference, the Axios website reported that an informal “Committee to Block the Election,” made up of people who worked in the Obama and Bill Clinton administrations, is “plotting by the hour” to throw Biden out of the election. These individuals are reportedly commissioning polls, lobbying former presidents and organizing donors, which had some effect when it was announced on Friday that $90 million in donations had been frozen while Biden is vying for the nomination.
But there are continuing signs that Biden’s team may have stronger convictions than the skeptics. In a meeting with White House staff on Thursday, Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, a Biden ally who returned to politics after suffering a stroke, brusquely dismissed colleagues who argued the president would risk undermining his own achievements if he stayed in the race and lost to Trump.
“When you ruin a great president with a terrible debate, you leave a legacy behind,” he said, according to the Politico website.
In the face of that frenzy, will Democratic elites, mocked by Biden last week and blamed for their own predicament, have the courage to deliver a final blow and say, as Republican leaders once did with Nixon, “That’s enough”?
Sabato isn’t optimistic. “They definitely won’t do that,” he said. “Democrats have a knack for failing elections they can win, and they may do that again this time.”
