President Joe Biden meets with staff before a visit to a local school to discuss safely returning to class and the education investments in his economic agenda, Thursday, September 9, 2021, in the Oval Office. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)
Half the country already knew Biden was in bad shape, and the other half was rocked out of their delusion by his performance in last week’s debate. According to Charles LIpson at The Spectator, it will be a “nearly impossible battle to recover public trust after his disastrous debate against Donald Trump.” He writes:
The Democrats are not just caught between one dog and one hydrant. They are caught between three — and the water is coming down hard on their legs.
The first dog, obviously, is the president’s physical and mental condition and his status as the presumptive nominee who won near-unanimous support in the primaries and secured enough votes to win the nomination on the first ballot. Those victories leave Biden alone in charge of staying in the race. Others can pressure him, offer him carrots and sticks, but Biden and his family control the decision.
The second dog is Biden’s nearly impossible battle to recover public trust after his disastrous debate against Donald Trump. Voters simply don’t buy the White House explanation that it was “one bad night.” They think it’s night, alright, but it’s night in November above the Arctic Circle. It’s not going away soon. Damning perceptions like that harden and become irreversible unless the candidate can turn them around quickly and decisively.
Ah, there’s the rub. Biden and his staff know how risky it is to try, so they are delaying instead of acting. To undo the damage, if that is even possible, the president would have to appear repeatedly at campaign rallies, look strong and vigorous, read the teleprompter without major gaffes and then do something even harder. He would have to sit down for interviews with high-profile journalists and answer hard questions extemporaneously.
It’s obvious that Biden is loath to do that. He’s hardly tried since the debate. He got through one interview with George Stephanopoulos, stumbling but without falling on his face, but he waited over a week after the debate to do it. He has held only a couple of rallies. That’s it. He did do a few powder-puff interviews with local radio hosts but those were another disaster. His staff was caught handing the interviewers the questions, and we already know they hand Biden the answers. Even with those crutches, he told one interviewer he was the first black, female vice president.
Third, if Democrats manage to force Biden out of the race, they don’t have good alternatives. Joe’s vice president, Kamala Harris, is even more unpopular than he is. That’s remarkable since Biden’s approval of 36 percent is the lowest since modern polling was developed. But it will be impossible to get around her and nominate someone else.
How weak is Harris? Very. When she ran for the top position in 2020, she garnered no support and dropped out of the race before the first votes were cast. On paper, she looked great. She was a left-wing Democrat from California. She had plenty of rich supporters from her home state, where she had served as attorney general and US senator. And as a black woman, she checked all the “identity politics” boxes her party values. But what looked great on paper looked lousy in practice. Democratic primary voters didn’t buy it.
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