President Joe Biden has desperately tried to convince his fellow Democrats that he’s still their best hope in a furious three-week sprint after his disastrous debate.
He hasn’t done it. Each time, it seems like Biden might have finally closed the door just enough, another detractor bursts through, and the cycle begins anew.
On Wednesday, it was Rep. Adam Schiff of California, who became the highest-profile Democratic member of Congress to publicly call on Biden to step aside. The day ended with a flurry of reports that party bigwigs — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and House Minority Hakeem Jeffries — all delivered grim assessments of the president’s chances directly to him in recent days.
Biden has repeatedly said he’s not going anywhere. After avoiding the press more than his recent predecessors, Biden sat down for two high-profile interviews. He’s been granted even more sit-downs since then. He held a roughly hourlong news conference after the NATO summit concluded. And on top of it all, Biden has campaigned across the nation.
“Joe Biden is his party’s nominee. He’s the President of the United States. He’s running for reelection. Baseless conjecture from anonymous sources isn’t a scoop,” Biden campaign spokesperson TJ Ducklo wrote on Twitter, responding to an Axios report that Biden will be persuaded to drop out. “Tonight a convicted felon will talk about how he’ll make people’s lives worse if he gains power. Let’s focus.”
Quentin Fulks, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, told reporters that Biden’s campaign is squarely focused on him being the nominee.
“The vice president is a part of the Biden-Harris ticket,” Fulks told reporters on the sideline of the Republican National Committee in Milwaukee. “Our campaign is not working through any scenarios where President Biden is not at the top of the ticket.”
It still hasn’t been enough. It’s mainly because, at best, Biden has muddled through. At worse, the events that were supposed to reassure Democrats he is capable of mounting a serious campaign have instead provided more evidence that he is struggling. As Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who remains supportive of the president, told The New Yorker, Biden can sometimes struggle to string sentences together.
During the recent flurry of activity, Biden referred to his Defense Secretary Llloyd Austin as “the black man.” He called Vice President Kamala Harris “Vice President Trump.” He called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “President Putin.” Sometimes he quickly corrects himself, but often he just trails off.
Biden hasn’t just struggled. Former President Donald Trump has experienced the best stretch of any campaign he’s mounted. Trump is posting the strongest numbers for a GOP presidential nominee in over two decades. After his allies spent months portraying Biden as weak, Republicans have rallied around Trump’s defiant response to an assassination attempt.
This may have always been an impossible task. Polls have shown for quite a while that the American people think the oldest president in the nation’s history is too old to run again. He did it anyway. Unfortunately for Biden, his frequent retort to people doubting his ability to just “watch me” came true during the first debate when over 51 million Americans saw him struggle.
Democrats clamored for this post-debate schedule, but the notion that Biden would suddenly revert to some prime form isn’t how anything works. Much like the Kobayashi Maru, there was just no way for the president to win.
Biden’s best bet was to wait out the outrage. For now, he’s still playing that hand. Twenty Democratic members of Congress have called on him to step aside, but that’s less than 10% of all Democrats in Congress. Most critically, Biden has kept the powerful Congressional Black Caucus in his corner.
But top Democratic leaders aren’t totally satisfied. According to Politico, Pelosi told Biden that he’s dragging down the party. For the time being, Biden is sidelined in Delaware after testing positive for COVID-19.
Biden is the definition of a loyal party man. Now, he must determine what to do as the movement to push him aside gains momentum.
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