(Miami) We’re going to have to find something other than a 22-minute interview, seven days too late, to make people believe that Joe Biden just had “a bad night.”
In front of ABC’s cameras, a tanned Biden tried to replace the pale Biden of last week. He didn’t have a moment of absence. But the Democratic nominee didn’t reassure anyone.
Granted, “90 minutes of debate shouldn’t erase three and a half years of work,” as he said in Wisconsin shortly before the interview. But the “bad night” theory is beside the point. Barack Obama came to Biden’s defense with the same argument: He, too, has had bad debates. As much as Obama is an exceptional orator, he is a very average debater.
Except that’s not the point here. This isn’t about judging Joe Biden’s “performance.” This isn’t about privileging form over substance. If the debate was disastrous for the 46e president, it’s not because he expressed himself poorly, that he stammered or that he didn’t respond promptly to Donald Trump. We’re not talking about style. We’re not talking about eloquence. We’re talking about cognitive and physical capacity.
But Joe Biden dismisses this with a smile that is meant to be reassuring. When George Stephanopoulos asks him as delicately as possible if he intends to undergo a neurological examination, Biden replies: “I have one every day.”
The line is not bad, but it does not solve the problem. His problem. The vast majority of voters find him unfit to serve another term.
Yes, Mr. President, Trump lied “at least 28 times” in this debate. But what freaks Democrats out is that his weakness makes Trump’s election increasingly likely.
Just before the interview, the Washington Post reported that Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia is assembling a group of Democratic senators powerful enough to convince Biden to step aside. Not to mention the big donors who are starting to get seriously upset.
This is in addition to the Democratic representatives who have publicly said that Biden must go. There are those who are afraid of being dragged into the fray following him, and it is starting to smell like a Democratic sauve-qui-peut.
Biden counters that Warner is a good guy and that “the vast majority” of Democrats support him. Officially, perhaps. But for how long?
A few times the president sighed faintly. As if to take a breath of air from the surface of cold water into which he was being pushed…
The Democratic panic will not be calmed by this firm but empathetic interview, conducted with the greatest respect.
The president was not convincing. His voice is still weak. He does not develop his ideas forcefully. He is not very energetic. He ended two sentences with an “anyway”, like putting on the brakes on the road before taking the clos. A less bad evening of 22 minutes does not allow us to believe that the debate was an isolated incident due to a bad cold and too much travel.
“How will you feel in January if Donald Trump is sworn in as president?”
He would feel that he had “done his best”…
That’s all ?
But Mr. President, you see that the polls, already bad, are worse since the debate? Why don’t you leave with all the love that we have for you?
Joe Biden says “his” pollsters see a neck-and-neck race. Like in 2020, when “they” said he would lose.
That’s not true. His poll numbers are much worse this time.
Stephanopoulos points out that no one has ever been reelected with such a low approval rating (36%). Biden responds that this is not the right number.
Biden dismisses the very subject of the interview: his present and future cognitive capacity. He talks about his record. About NATO expansion. About Putin, whom he stands up to. About his efforts for peace in the Middle East. He understands “better than anyone” what needs to be done. About his successes in economic recovery, hailed by Nobel Prize winners in economics.
Yes, but we are talking about the present and the future…
The election in 125 days is about “the character of the next president,” Biden says. That was good in 2020. Saying, “I have an ethical sense, unlike Trump, a pathological liar,” is no longer enough. Everyone knows that. There are even court rulings on it.
In 2024, hesitant Americans must be convinced (not just the many who would vote for Biden’s photo rather than Trump), but “independents” must be convinced that he has the necessary vigor to put this “superior” ethic into action.
He tried, somewhat sadly, to make the most of the large partisan crowd that came to listen to him that same day in Wisconsin. Donald Trump knows the big crowd thing too.
For the most part, that is, his condition, Joe Biden and his entourage are in denial. Everything will get better! Like in 2020…
The one Americans watching Friday night saw, however, was only a diminished version of that year’s candidate.