President Joe Biden needed a crucial interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos to calm the clamor from Democratic insiders calling for him to step down. Not only that, Biden’s campaign was likely hoping his primetime appearance would bring a much-needed reset to a race that seemed stalled at best. A year ago, in July, multiple polls had Biden tied or leading Donald Trump by a few points. Now, the latest polls show Trump leading by as much as six points nationwide.
Friday’s primetime event may or may not have felt like an improvement from last month’s painful debate fiasco. Social media reactions seemed mixed at best. But even if rank-and-file liberals turned off their TVs in relief, Biden’s biggest weakness wasn’t with the Democratic Party’s core base. A new CNN poll released this week found that 91% of Democrats still support his candidacy. The latest Wall Street Journal poll puts that number lower, at 86% of registered Democrats. Either way, the Biden campaign knows its path to victory will likely run through undecideds, independents and Trump-skeptic conservatives, many of whom now think Democrats are better off without Biden on the ticket, according to the same CNN poll.
Even if rank-and-file liberals were relieved to turn off the TV, Biden’s biggest weakness was not the core Democratic Party.
Convincing voters and donors who don’t already love Biden will be a much tougher task than placating his nervous but loyal supporters. Concerns about Biden’s age and mental health have been ignored by White House officials for more than a year with varying degrees of meanness and condescension. And Biden’s shoddy performances in the debates only reinforce the impression that those inside the political bubble are not speaking to the American people as equals.
Concerns about Biden’s mental health have also been uniquely damaging, in a way quite different from Trump’s attacks: A CBS News/YouGov poll released in late June found that nearly three-quarters of registered voters doubt whether Biden has the cognitive capacity to handle the job of president, up from 65% earlier that month. Fewer than half of voters surveyed (49%) said the same about Trump.
That’s a big reason why Biden seemed determined to pursue an aggressive, somewhat combative strategy in his ABC News interview, especially as he pushed back hard on a fairly straightforward question from Stephanopoulos about whether he was aware of recent tensions within the party and his own declining approval ratings.
“I haven’t seen what you’re proposing,” Biden said, adding that he’d “only seen it in the press.” Biden’s witty retort only works if you don’t follow the news, and judging by his multiple meetings with concerned lawmakers last week, it’s not sincere.
Democrats including Reps. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, Raul Grijalva of Arizona, Lloyd Doggett of Texas and, most recently, Mike Quigley of Illinois, have called on Biden to drop out of the race in recent days. Others have been more cautious but less enthusiastic. Reps. Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Grusenkamp Perez of Washington have warned that Biden would lose if he ran against Trump. Some of Biden’s major donors are even trying to pressure the president to step down. It’s hard to believe Biden has missed all of that.
It was also a claim that Biden himself quickly denied. After Biden insisted that his approval rating wasn’t actually down, Stephanopoulos reminded the president that Biden was in fact down six points in a recent New York Times/Siena poll of likely voters.
“That’s true,” Biden shot back, seemingly abandoning the argument he’d made just minutes earlier: “The New York Times had me behind before I even got involved in this race. I was behind by 10 points. … Nothing has changed substantially in the New York Times poll.”
Biden’s polling message clearly needs further refinement.
It was clear that Trump weighed heavily on Biden’s mind throughout, with much of the interview focused on drawing sharp contrasts with his rival.
It was clear that Trump weighed heavily on Biden’s mind throughout, with much of the interview focused on drawing a sharp contrast with his rival who he said is “trying to ruin everything” Biden has achieved so far.
“He’s a born liar,” Biden said. “He lied 27, 28 times. [during the debate]…This is the guy who told people to put bleach on their arms to deal with COVID.” (Fact check: Mostly true)
Biden also confounded skeptics by opting for a pre-recorded interview rather than a live appearance, a choice that may have forced the president to think more willingly on the spot.
Biden made it clear on Friday that he would not submit to any kind of public cognitive testing, but he acknowledged that he performs better during the day, and even said at a Democratic governors’ rally on Wednesday that he plans to end the event no later than 8 p.m. This is not the solution many are looking for. Unconvinced voters may also be wondering what would have happened if Biden’s performance had in fact taken place during prime time instead of during the day.
Indeed, being president is an incredibly demanding, around-the-clock job, and Biden and his team have yet to convince allies, lawmakers, and the American public at large that he is up to the task, even if it means sometimes making good presidential decisions in the middle of the night.
Stephanopoulos, to his credit, didn’t pull any punches in focusing on several questions about the Democratic Party’s crisis of confidence, at one point directly asking Biden whether he felt confident about his own mental state.
“Are you being honest with yourself when you say you are mentally and physically capable of serving another four years?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“Yes, I do,” Biden responded.After a stormy week that has left even some in his party questioning Biden’s ability to self-examine, it remains to be seen how many outside his inner circle share his confidence.
Biden has remained adamant he remains in the race, telling Stephanopoulos he would only withdraw if “Almighty God” so commands. But if Biden cannot reverse his declining approval ratings, he may find himself more worried about voters who are rapidly losing faith in him than about God.
