What can we say to make you go, Joe? It is the question that more and more Democrats – elected members and ordinary voters – are asking as the rumbling crisis over Joe Biden’s presidential candidacy, sparked by a pitiful display in the debate in Atlanta, degenerates into a war of attrition.
Last Thursday, the president’s fate appeared perched on the edge of an abyss, as Congress members deserted him, senators poured out their heartfelt fears at a tearful meeting with White House staff, and even his own close aides and advisers briefed reporters that he should stand aside.
Then Biden gave a rare press conference to close Nato’s 75th anniversary summit in Washington. With the exception of the now half-expected flubs – referring to Kamala Harris as “vice-president Trump” (having earlier introduced Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, as “President Putin”) – the feared Atlanta-style disaster did not materialise; instead, the 81-year-old Biden seemed to confound his advanced years as he expounded on foreign policy with an authority that would certainly have eluded Donald Trump, even if several thoughts trailed off unfinished.
Consequently, the president is now locked in a battle of wills with key segments of his party, with the campaign to coax him to step aside and avert a possible catastrophic election defeat boiling down to who has the greater conviction.
Campaigning in the vital swing state of Michigan on Friday, Biden made plain how strong his will was, evoking scenes that would have fitted a Trump rally.
“They hammer me because I sometimes confuse names. I say that’s Charlie instead of Bill,” Biden told a rally in Detroit, blaming his predicament on the media. “But guess what? Donald Trump has gotten a free pass.”
His broadside prompted boos from the crowd, some of whom turned to point accusingly at watching reporters in a scene with striking Trumpian parallels, the New York Times reported, while mention of Trump, his presumed Republican opponent, provoked chants of “lock him up” resembling those aimed at Hillary Clinton by the former president’s own supporters in the 2016 campaign.
The scenes unfolded after Mike Levin, a California Democrat, became the party’s first member of Congress to tell Biden to his face that he should step aside and “pass the torch” in a virtual meeting with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Unmoved, the president replied that voters should “touch me, poke me, ask me questions” if they think he is too old to serve or beat Trump, as polls suggest many do.
“I think I know what I’m doing, because the truth of the matter is – I’m going to say something outrageous – no president in three years has done what we have in three years other than Franklin Roosevelt,” he reportedly said.
Where does the Democratic party go in the face of this obduracy, with its own national convention little more than a month away?
The default answer may be to hope for the worst as a means of hoping for the best, according to Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. That means waiting for Biden to undergo another crack-up reminiscent of the debate fiasco during the rash of public appearances he has promised to re-establish his credibility.
“I asked one member of Congress what extra pressure they could bring and he answered, ‘that’s all we got unless there’s another episode’,” said Sabato. “Does he freeze at the podium, does he start babbling? This member of Congress correctly pointed out to me that Trump has done the very same thing a number of times and has gotten away with it. But Biden can’t now get away with it – and he’s done it to himself.”
Another imagined scenario – widely touted, yet far from inevitable – is of party elders visiting the White House and persuading Biden to stand aside in the wider interest, as Republican grandees did with Richard Nixon in 1974 at the denouement of Watergate, telling him he would be impeached if he did not resign.
Speculation is rife that similar moves are afoot with Biden. “I think that there will be a visit to the White House by elder statesmen, probably Barack Obama, possibly Bill Clinton, John Kerry – contemporaries of Biden’s – who just say: ‘“Look at the party, look at yourself. You just can’t continue’,” said John Zogby, a veteran US pollster.
Without such dramatic symbolism Democrats face a “daunting task”, he argued, in persuading Biden to surrender a political prize he spent half a century of public service coveting and preparing for.
Short of that, Nancy Pelosi, the 84-year-old former speaker of the House of Representatives, and the former president, Barack Obama, are reported to have conferred privately about their concerns. Obama was apparently told in advance by George Clooney, a major Democratic fundraiser, about an opinion article the actor had written for the New York Times calling on the president to end his campaign – and did nothing to stop it.
In a drama-laden report following Biden’s Nato press conference, the Axios website described an unofficial “committee to un-elect the president” consisting of figures who had served in the administrations of Obama and Bill Clinton, that was “plotting hourly” to push Biden out of the race. These individuals were reported to be commissioning polls, lobbying ex-presidents and organising donors – with some effect on Friday when it was announced that $90m of donations had been frozen while Biden heads the ticket.
Yet signs persist that Biden’s camp may have fiercer convictions than their more numerous doubters. At Thursday’s meeting with White House staffers, the pro-Biden Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman – who revived his political career after suffering a stroke – crudely dismissed colleagues arguing that the president risked shredding his legacy if he stayed in the race only to lose to Trump.
“You have legacies, too, if you fuck over a great president over a bad debate,” he said, according to the Politico website.
Faced with that fervour, does the Democratic party’s elite – derided and blamed by Biden last week for his plight – have the stomach to apply the coup de grace and say time’s up, as GOP leaders once did with Nixon?
Sabato is not hopeful. “I guarantee you they won’t do it,” he said. “The Democrats have a talent for blowing races they could win. This may be another one.”
