Joe Biden Is Stuck in Limbo. His Supporters Are, Too.
There’s a big difference between ageism and realism.
ASSUMING OR PRETENDING AN OLDER PERSON can’t do a job is ageism. Assessing evidence that’s in plain sight and acknowledging what you see, especially if it is confirmed repeatedly and becomes more pronounced over time—that’s realism.
Democrats pride themselves on residing in “the reality-based community,” as a Republican strategist said mockingly in 2004. They know a deadly attack when they see it, as they did on January 6, 2021, when Donald Trump loyalists stormed the U.S. Capitol. They should know a career-ending debacle when they see it, as they did on June 27, when Joe Biden—in an early debate he himself had sought—folded under pressure before an audience of 51 million.
They should recognize that while Biden did not fold at his Thursday night press conference, referring to Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump” did not build confidence—especially after he had earlier introduced Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin.”
They should trust reporting that Trump and his team want badly to run against Biden and no one else.
They should accept that Monday’s upcoming interview with NBC’s Lester Holt might not be any more reassuring than last Friday’s interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
“Even though they turned his mic off, he was still shouting. And I let it distract me,” Biden told Stephanopoulos. “I realized that I just wasn’t in control.”
That is not what you want to hear from an 81-year-old trying to keep the most powerful job in the world. It’s especially disconcerting compared to Biden’s reaction four years ago when Trump pulled the same stunt on a live mic. “Will you shut up, man?” Biden finally snapped.
That’s the best debate line of the past 35 years, in my view. That Biden didn’t reprise it last month was just one sign of many that he has changed, more than we’ve been allowed to see.
THERE ARE SEVERAL WORST PARTS OF THIS, if that’s possible. One is the unsettling, ubiquitous public discussion about an issue as personal as aging. Everyone ages differently, as we should all know from observing public figures and from our own lives. Those of us getting on, though younger than Biden, wonder what our futures hold. Those of us with parents much older than Biden wonder with trepidation what his future holds.
Another worst part is that every day for Biden is now a test. It’s worrisome enough when relatives who still have their car keys brag about making left turns from right lanes or lose their way on roads they’ve driven for sixty years. With Biden we wait tensely for the next flub, freeze, trailed-off word or sentence. The next all-too-transparent admission that he needs more sleep and less late-night work, or was “given a list” of which reporters to call on. The next terrible answer to a predictable question. (Did he watch the first debate afterward? “I don’t think I did, no.”)
It’s not that Biden is 81. It’s that he’s 81 with a soft, raspy voice, a faded appearance, limited energy, embarrassing memory lapses that come with age, the good days and bad days that also come with age—and, as of June 27, a proven inability to perform under high pressure in a hostile environment.
I have no illusions about Trump, who sent a nasty fundraising pitch last night headlined “BIDEN IS A VEGETABLE!” Between Trump’s “executive time” and visits to his various golf clubs, travel and security financed by taxpayers and money going directly into his business coffers, he was a part-time president and a negligent and corrupt one as well.
Biden by contrast is good at many parts of his job, as we have seen with his bipartisan legislative deals, the expansion of NATO, his climate and energy successes, and the thriving U.S. economy. But Americans don’t get it. Blame Fox News, blame the media environment, blame Donald Trump, fine—but also blame Biden and his team for letting them get away with it.
As Never Trump Republican attorney Chris Truax wrote Wednesday: “Sharing good news is one of the most basic of presidential skills. . . . Forget selling voters on his vision, Biden hasn’t been able to effectively communicate basic facts.”
If he and his team were better at this, people might appreciate the soaring stock market that set records as recently as Wednesday, an unemployment rate at or near historic lows for months, and prices down last month for the first time since the pandemic.
The communications disconnect leads to what you might call branding inconsistency. The Biden campaign’s ads and statements are sharp, aggressive, and snarky. But since his energetic State of the Union speech in March, Biden’s appearances often don’t match the brand. If they do clear a bar, it’s because he’s reading a teleprompter, using notes, or answering pre-approved questions.
TODAY’S JOE BIDEN is a walking example of Bill Clinton’s aphorism that “When people are feeling insecure, they’d rather have someone who is strong and wrong rather than somebody who is weak and right.”
I don’t consider Biden weak. And he is certainly right in many ways. I can’t remember a president with better sense of how to close bipartisan deals or provide U.S. leadership in a troubled world.
He’s wrong, however, to assert that he’s the only one who can fill that role. “Who’s gonna be able to hold NATO together like me?” he asked rhetorically in the ABC interview. He also took credit for “checkmating China” and suggested no one else has the “reach” or knows all the players like he does. He might as well have said “I alone can fix it,” Trump’s absurd strongman-fantasy line at the 2016 GOP convention. (Spoiler: He did not fix it.)
Biden is also wrong to claim that only he can beat Trump, or is best positioned to do so. Harris does better against Trump in some polls. New ratings from the Cook Political Report show six states moving toward Trump, and the former president has a four-point lead in a new Pew Research Center poll. That doesn’t look like Biden winning. It looks like a Trump victory—and with it, a wholesale reversal of Biden’s many accomplishments.
I’m reminded of Barack Obama telling Stephanopoulos after the 2014 midterms that “I’m very interested in making sure that I’ve got a Democratic successor.” A few months later, I noted that remark and wrote, “Considering the chasm between the parties and the extent to which he has relied on executive action, much of his legacy depends on it.”
Obama’s fears materialized when Hillary Clinton lost. Trump withdrew America from the Paris climate accord, the Iran nuclear deal, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership meant to contain and counter China’s trading clout. He tried his best to kill the Affordable Care Act. And he named three Supreme Court justices who helped gut the Voting Rights Act and overturn Roe v. Wade. The consequences of Trump’s 2016 win are many, damaging, and lasting. And should he regain office, the future—the 2025 project—would be even worse.
Biden of all people should understand these stakes. In this moment, it’s no overstatement to say that he alone can fix this, or at the very least give his party a fighting chance.
 | A guest post by
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I think a strong part of Joe Biden’s chances pre-debate was if they went after his age the senior voters would rally to him like in 2020 because Republican attacks would be grotesque and offensive to the elderly community. But now that’s been a bit neutralized because Republicans don’t have to say much since we all saw that performance.