Wednesday night, a slew of news stories came out detailing plans by various Democrats to persuade President Biden to surrender the presidential nomination. One nugget, from the New York Times, struck me as especially devastating. It reported that Democrats have seen a poll showing “voters are deeply distrustful of elected officials who vouch for the president’s mental capacity and endorse him.”
What this means is that any Democratic candidate in a remotely competitive race will face huge incentives not to vouch for Biden’s fitness for office. Many of them will say outright that he is unfit for office.
That is not an impossible burden for an elected official to overcome (Donald Trump ran and won under these conditions in 2016), but it is quite difficult. (Trump squeaked into office by the slimmest margin, while losing the national vote.)
Biden’s predicament is compounded by the fact that he is making it very difficult for his remaining adherents to maintain any faith in his ability to serve a second term. From yesterday alone, here is a harrowing video of him walking up the steps to Air Force One:
President Biden departs Las Vegas after testing positive for COVID-19. pic.twitter.com/ELR65mrvEG
— CSPAN (@cspan) July 17, 2024
And here he is forgetting the name of the secretary of Defense:
Rough interview clip from Biden's interview with BET News tonight
— umichvoter ????️???? (@umichvoter) July 18, 2024
"The secretary of defense- the black man" pic.twitter.com/CIuQDGx3g0
Biden has been saying his debate performance was a one-off mistake that somehow won’t recur, but that promise flies in the face not only of the one-way linear nature of the aging process but visual evidence he is providing.
The dilemma is compounded further by a donor revolt. Biden’s largest funders have lost faith and are redirecting their efforts elsewhere.
Biden may or may not have the formal power to keep the nomination. (It depends on whether the delegates stay loyal to him or decide the conscience clause allows them to interpret the will of the voters as having changed.) Even if he controls the delegates, however, the nomination has become devalued. A Biden candidacy now means being deeply outspent after having enjoyed a massive spending advantage to this point that has yielded nothing. And it means running in an environment where his fellow Democrats are openly casting doubt on his ability to do the job.
At some point, Biden ought to recognize that he is fighting to keep a crown made of tin.
