CNN
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President Joe Biden’s big news conference on Thursday night didn’t end his reelection campaign, but it showed why it will be so difficult for him to save it.
Biden endured the painful latest test of his public perception amid a flurry of calls for him to resign from Democrats who worry he is inevitably going to lose to former President Donald Trump.
The president’s sobering reality is that every step he takes to address his greatest weakness — his age and frailty — accentuates it more — and his defiant attitude suggests he may be one of the last to realize it.
“I believe I’m the best person to govern. And I believe I’m the best person to win,” Biden told reporters at the NATO summit. But as soon as he finished speaking, Rep. Jim Himes, a senior Democrat, again defected from the Democratic Party, indicating that many in Biden’s divided and anxious party don’t believe him. Others followed suit before the night was over.
The president is therefore being given another fateful moment by one of his most respected political friends, Nancy Pelosi. The former Speaker of the House, who remains one of the most influential figures in the Democratic Party, suggested earlier this week that the end of the summit should be a catalyst for renewed reflection, even as Biden remains adamant that he is wrapping up his campaign. CNN reported Thursday night that Pelosi and former President Barack Obama had privately discussed the future of Biden and his campaign.
Another defining moment now looms, with Biden looking increasingly at risk.
No president has ever endured the press conference ordeal that Biden has faced. He grimaced when reporters questioned his insight and appeared hurt when confronted with the words of defecting Democrats. Shielded by loyal friends and longtime aides (who are now accused of hiding the extent of Biden’s decline), it’s reasonable to assume that Biden is learning the full extent of his personal and political predicament for the first time.
Biden’s performance wasn’t as bad as his last debate performance just two weeks ago — and it might not have attracted as much attention had the circumstances been less tense — but it made painfully clear what kind of person Biden is now: 81 and losing the bombast and Irish sparkle in his eye that are his essence.
At times, Biden’s voice rose and quivered with passion, as when he spoke about gun violence. At other times, his theatrical whispering revealed his age. When he reminisced about his time in the Senate and his early political battles, he came across as a grandfather recounting a life’s triumphs and defeats. That’s typical of most octogenarians, but it’s politically dangerous for a sitting president who must project vitality to audiences at home and abroad.
Yet Biden, addressing reporters for an hour in the kind of meeting many Democrats have urged to fill their days with, still demonstrated he can lead nuanced discussions on national security issues at a much deeper level than Trump could, arguing that his job performance and record on par with any modern Democratic president are evidence he’s fit to serve a second term, itself a daily test of mental flexibility.
The president’s warning to stand as a bulwark against threats to democracy was particularly pertinent against the backdrop of a statesmanlike platform at the NATO summit: Biden has led the Western world more effectively than any president since George H. W. Bush, and he has rightly argued that he is far more sympathetic to the anxieties of Americans and their democracy than his critics in the midterm elections.
But while Thursday’s performance may have been well-received with voters already leaning toward Biden, the president desperately needs to pick up swing votes in states recent polls have shown him losing to Trump.
Every public appearance he now walks a cognitive tightrope, with every word potentially sending him crashing to the ground, and it’s all refracted through the prism of the debate with Trump that sent his campaign hurtling toward a tailspin.
Even before Thursday’s big news conference, Biden’s night got off to a bad start when he mixed up the names of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his arch rival, Russian President Vladimir Putin. He was quick to correct the verbal gaffe that anyone could make. (Trump, for example, confused Pelosi with former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley.) But such errors are becoming more and more frequent with the president. And soon after, when a reporter asked Biden about the qualities of a vice president, he referred to “Vice President Trump” instead of Kamala Harris.
Those gaffes alone would not disqualify Biden from the presidency. But majorities of voters have been saying in polls for months that they worry he’s too old. The debate debacle had a classic political effect: confirming voters’ existing negative impressions — impressions that have only been reinforced with each subsequent scuffle.
It is becoming increasingly difficult for Democrats to tell voters to ignore the evidence they see with their own eyes and insist that Biden is capable of serving as president until January 2029.
The political maelstrom from which Biden cannot escape was highlighted when CNN’s Edward Isaac Dovere and Jeff Zeleny reported that after speaking with more than a dozen lawmakers and officials, Biden’s demise is now clear and it’s just a matter of how it plays out. Democrats are looking to Pelosi and Obama to end a crisis that presents the party with a serious possibility of replacing its nominee a month before the convention and less than four months until the election, they reported.
That Biden’s shaky press conference was greeted with expressions of relief within his own camp shows just how grim the situation is for him. A White House official said Biden demonstrated “solid leadership on both domestic and foreign affairs.” The official wasn’t wrong, but the remark ignored the fact that a president will be judged not just on those issues but also on his ability to communicate and convey a sense of leadership.
One Democrat acknowledged that Biden was “strong” at the press conference. But, he added, “This doesn’t address the long-term issues or the victory.” This is the key point: Two weeks after the debate, Biden’s campaign is not only bogged down in claiming he had a “bad night,” but also in failing to shake off the impression formed in Atlanta.
Biden’s biggest problem, cited by all the Democrats who are calling for him to step down, is the sense that his near-certainty to lose to Trump would pave the way for the MAGA movement to monopolise power in Washington, backed by a conservative Supreme Court that is already reshaping the structure of the country. “If he runs, we’re doomed. He doesn’t have the ability to run a presidential campaign and he risks taking the House and the Senate down with him,” a person directly involved in Biden’s reelection effort told CNN’s MJ Lee on Thursday night.
Rep. Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN’s Caitlin Collins that Democrats face a critical question: “We have to put aside emotion and loyalty and affection and ask, over the next four or five months, is the story (against Trump) going to be told with enough precision and poetry and beauty to negate the numbers that say we’re going to lose?”
“Is that a risk you want to take?” the Connecticut Democrat said. “You’re not just putting your political reputation on the line, you’re putting the future of the United States of America on the line,” he argued.
Biden isn’t completely alone — Tennessee Rep. Steve Cohen told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that Democrats need to stop playing “fantasy games” and come together to defeat Trump — but after losing momentum against Biden earlier this week, the president now appears to be in near-terminal decline politically.
His tragedy is that the qualities he boasted about Thursday — the wisdom of age, his strong legislative record, his world-class statesmanship and his lifelong refusal to be defeated — no longer hold up against the weight of time and politics.
“I didn’t take this job on my own merit. I took this job to finish the job that I started,” Biden said.
But every act detailing why the president deserves a second term also shows why he will never win a second term and run with it.
