It’s Time for Biden to Put Country First
What matters is beating Trump.
Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. —Proverbs 16:18
PRESIDENT BIDEN, WHO EARNED OUR RESPECT and affection over the past four years, is now trying our souls. In an interview on a Philadelphia radio show, he mumbled that he was proud to be “the first black woman to serve with a black president.” Later, word leaked that campaign aides had submitted proposed questions to the radio hosts in advance. Was that a vote of no confidence from the staff?
In his interview with George Stephanopoulos, which was intended to calm worries about his debate performance—which itself was intended to calm worries about his deteriorating mental condition—the president was asked how he would feel if Donald Trump were sworn in for a second term in January 2025. “I’ll feel,” he said, “as long as I gave it my all and I did the good as job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.”
Biden’s word jumble is disturbing in two ways. In the first place, it’s yet further evidence that the president’s verbal fluency (and very possibly his mental functioning) is declining. He would not have uttered this babble three years ago, or even as recently as a year ago if reports from insiders are accurate. But that was not the worst part, as Rep. Adam Schiff noted on Meet the Press yesterday. This election isn’t about Biden giving it one more college try. It’s really not about Biden at all. It’s about ensuring that Trump cannot return to the Oval Office. Stephanopoulos was attempting to get the president to focus on that; to ask himself whether it wouldn’t be better to withdraw rather than risk that unthinkable outcome. Biden refused to think of the stakes for the country and made it all about himself.
Biden’s interview answers are consistent with everything else we’ve seen from him since the catastrophic debate—denial, selfishness, and appalling judgment. He’s elevated his son, Hunter, to a key advisor role. Hunter is apparently attending White House meetings and strongly advocating that his father stick it out. The younger Biden (like Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump) has no qualifications to serve in the White House. How diminished must Joe Biden be to not to see that Hunter may have ulterior motives? President Biden has promised not to pardon Hunter, but after November 5 (whatever the outcome), that promise would have less weight. Hunter may be counting on that, but one would hope that the president could see the stakes for the nation a little more clearly than his troubled son.
Biden also showcased his deep denial about the state of the race in the Stephanopoulos interview. Asked about the polls, Biden waved them away, saying people had underestimated his capacity to win in 2020 as well. When Stephanopoulos pressed the point, noting that no president with a 36 percent approval rating has ever been reelected, Biden snapped, “That’s not what our polls show . . . our polls show it’s a toss up.” Later, he seemed to discount polling altogether, asking, “Do you think polling is as accurate as it used to be?”
Polling isn’t gospel, but it’s not fiction either. Dismissing polls is easier than accounting for the loss of support Biden has clocked since the debate, and the huge percentage of Democrats who say, even in our ultra-polarized time, that Biden should step aside.
Apparently, Biden is willing to risk the future of the country on the bet that the polls are wrong.
Responding to Biden’s defiance, Democrats are tiptoeing around his delicate ego by suggesting that he really needs to do more spontaneous, unscripted events like town halls and press conferences in the coming week to reassure a dubious nation that he’s up to another 4 and a half years in office. It’s pretty clear that they have no confidence he can pull this off and that this is their way of gently pushing him to come to the same conclusion. His intransigence is infuriating.
Both Biden and many Democrats protest that it’s unfair to be focusing on Biden’s limitations when his opponent is a criminal would-be autocrat and the all-around least fit man to serve as president. But the threat Trump poses cuts the other way: When the alternative is so dire, the Democrats should be fielding a candidate who is unassailably electable—as they did in 2020. No candidate is without flaws, of course, and Biden has many advantages, but voters have consistently reported for years that they think he’s too old. Before the debate, it was possible to imagine that the 2020 Biden would show up for key moments and that voters’ misgivings would be overcome. But that hope was shattered on June 27, and there is no returning to the status quo ante. Voters’ worst fears have been confirmed and then some.
It’s worth dwelling for a moment on the fundamentals here. When it comes to a president’s mental and physical health, voters are unforgiving. At a primitive level, they are choosing someone to be able to respond to a natural disaster or military attack. A potential president must clear this bar. It’s the primate part of our brains. No doubt millions of Americans would vote for a comatose Biden over Trump, but there aren’t enough voters like us to be certain of victory. As Bill Clinton is reported to have said, “Strong and wrong beats weak and right every time.”
Some Biden stalwarts object that Kamala Harris is just as unpopular as the president. That is true, but it’s also the case that she hasn’t had many opportunities to improve her standing with voters, and many just think she hasn’t done anything as vice president (which is really part of the job description). If she were suddenly thrust into the spotlight as the nominee, she might rise to the occasion and enjoy a surge of support.
Similarly, many worry that an open convention would devolve into chaos. It might. But it seems equally likely that it would be the first political convention in decades to generate a true contest and accordingly intense public interest.
There was one answer Biden offered to Stephanopoulos that may signal the way things must go in the coming days. Stephanopoulos asked whether, “if Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries and Nancy Pelosi come down and say, ‘We’re worried that if you stay in the race, we’re gonna lose the House and the Senate,’ how will you respond?” Biden said he’d already spoken to many of them, and they hadn’t asked him to step down. Stephanopoulos asked again, “But if they do?” Biden smiled and asserted, “They’re not going to do that.”
Those words could be interpreted as marching orders.