President Joe Biden has a tough task in his immediate path forward to dispel Democratic fears about his health, wrote Stephen Collison for CNN on Wednesday.
The developments following last Thursday's debate, he wrote, have "created another extraordinary twist in a stunning campaign featuring two presidents, one who is a convicted felon, and the other who is already the oldest to hold the job in history" and give Trump — who ironically is also advanced in age and facing questions about his mental acuity — an opening to shift the focus away from the contrast of competency and leadership that Biden hopes to create in the campaign.
The real issue for Biden, Collison continued, is not public sentiment or polls, which have only moved a little, but the criticism from Democratic elected officials.
"The calls by senior Democrats for more explanation from the president and for energy in his campaigning are now impossible for Biden and his team to ignore," he wrote. "And the ultimate outcome of the panic over Biden’s performance is now not possible to predict – a hugely vulnerable position for a president seeking a second term."
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With that pressure rising, and some figures in the party discussing the logistics of replacing him at the top of the ticket, Biden needs to take drastic action to get back on track, Collison wrote. Something that goes beyond his upcoming ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos.
"The issue that was really posed by the debate was whether voters can imagine him — in his diminished current state — able to fully serve another term that would end when he is 86," wrote Collison — something that Biden's aides, like Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, have not worked hard enough to answer and need to get on top of.
Many major facets of the election cycle are yet to happen, which could either change or reinforce the current direction, starting with both parties' conventions later in the summer, and Trump's ongoing legal battles, including a possible "mini-trial" hearing over evidence in the federal election conspiracy case and sentencing in the Manhattan criminal case.
