The End of the Beginning
Today, members of Congress will start returning to Washington for the first time since Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance and his ABC News interview, which left a very bad taste in Democrats’ mouths.
The bad taste came from the final moments. What would Biden think if Trump, the threat to democracy and autocrat in waiting, won? Well, “I gave it my all” fell flat. “I did the goodest job I know I can do,” hit hard. “Goodest,” he actually said.
As James Carville noted a few weeks ago, Joe Biden’s debate performance just over a week ago was like looking at your grandmother naked. That is just not something you can unsee. For Biden’s core supporters, they can say his ABC interview was good enough, but for everyone else, including a lot of Democrats, it was discouraging.
The audio level was so bad because Biden was speaking so softly that the audio engineer had to boost his audio levels. That is a symptom of Parkinson’s disease and some forms of dementia. Now comes word that a Parkinson’s Disease specialist has been to the White House.
You’ll note that the American press corps was more fixated on flags at Sam Alito’s house two years ago than on a neurologist visiting the White House.
Likewise, we now know that the White House scripted President Biden’s questions on two radio interviews.
On top of that, “senior White House officials” are now starting to tell the New York Times and other outlets that Biden is not fit to continue.
Certainly, many leading Democrats have publicly expressed support for the president, or remained quiet about any misgivings. One senior White House official, however, who has worked with Mr. Biden during his presidency, vice presidency and 2020 campaign, said in an interview on Saturday morning that Mr. Biden should not seek re-election.
After watching Mr. Biden in private, in public and while traveling with him, the official said they no longer believed the president had what it took to campaign in a vigorous way and defeat Donald J. Trump. The official, who insisted on anonymity in order to continue serving, said Mr. Biden had steadily showed more signs of his age in recent months, including speaking more slowly, haltingly and quietly, as well as appearing more fatigued in private.
Perhaps the same person did it with Semafor:
The person insisted on careful ground rules: No details on the specific policy area they’d work on, no gender, age, or sexual orientation. Their credibility basically depends on my vouching that they’re a serious person, which I can do — though I should also say this person has nothing to say about the president’s physical condition, and was limited to their own experience outside Biden’s tight inner circle.
Here is the assertion this person would like to get across: It’s unclear even to some inside the West Wing policy process which policy issues reach the president, and how. Major decisions go into an opaque circle that includes White House chief of staff, Jeff Zients (who talks to the president regularly) and return concluded. (The big exception to this pattern, they said, is foreign policy.)
Notice none of these people are willing to be public with their names to give more credibility to their accusations.
All signs point to the need for Democrats to try to persuade, not force, Joe Biden out of the race once they get back to Washington this week. But only Joe Biden can make the decision.
Or Biden could take the Bloomberg poll and other polling that shows Biden narrowing the race and declare himself on the side of the working class against an elite cabal of Democrats trying to force Joe from Scranton out of the race. Biden could take this to Chicago and dare Democrats to try to oust him with only a few months before the election.
Compounding the problem, on the Sunday shows the Democrats seemed divided. Bernie Sanders was more or less with the President. Chris Murphy signaled Biden could turn it around. Adam Schiff was less enthusiastic. Maxine Waters, at a gather of black leaders, defended Biden and said he’d stay in the race. John Fetterman is defending Joe Biden.
On MSNBC, one of the weekend shows had an entire segment of strategists and pundits attacking the “small number” of Democrats and media figures trying to force out Biden. They made the case that forcing Biden out now would doom the Democrats and it was better to rally around him.
Over the weekend, I talked to several senior Democratic strategists. Here’s what they told me.