(Washington) Joe Biden, extremely weakened, returns to the campaign on Friday after a completely failed debate against Donald Trump which raises, even among his supporters, the question of whether he will continue to run for a second term.
(Re)read “A catastrophic presidential debate for Joe Biden”
(Re)read Yves Boisvert’s column “The shipwreck of Joe Biden”
Just read the implacable editorial by Thomas Friedman, who describes himself as a “friend” of the American president, on Friday in the New York Times.
“Joe Biden, a good man, a good president, is not in a position to run for re-election,” writes the editorialist, who says he “cried” seeing the 81-year-old Democrat, at times haggard, stumble over the words and stammer for 90 minutes in front of CNN cameras.
Philanthropist Maria Shriver, niece of the assassinated president “JFK” and ally of Joe Biden, wrote on the social network
“He had one thing to do [lors du débat], and it was to reassure the United States that he was capable of being president at his age. It’s a failure,” said a former Democratic senator, Claire McCaskill, on the MSNBC channel, which the main interested party often watches.
The campaign team’s attempt to justify the slump by a “cold”, by instead drawing attention to the “lies” spouted by Donald Trump, fell flat.
” Panic ”
The American media are reporting a real “panic” among Democrats, four months before the election and about six weeks before the convention that is supposed to swear in the American president.
Which should be an opportunity to ask “who is best placed to prevent Trump from returning to power”, even judges a German official in charge of bilateral cooperation with the United States, Michael Link, interviewed by the daily. Tagesspiegel.
For now, however, no Democratic Party heavyweight has publicly echoed this sentiment.
Officially, the line remains to support the octogenarian candidate, who will be campaigning in North Carolina at 12:30 p.m. local time, a state that his team hopes to be able to wrest from his 78-year-old Republican rival in November.
At the same time, he will raise funds in New York and then in the Hamptons, a very chic resort area not far away.
Donald Trump will be in Chesapeake, in the state of Virginia, on Friday.
The billionaire, so quick to mock “Sleepy Joe”, did not even need to insist after the debate on the poor performance of his opponent.
Above all, he published a video on his Truth Social network showing him hitting some nice golf shots: the former real estate developer did not appreciate Joe Biden mocking his performance on the green during the debate.
Convention
Vice President Kamala Harris herself acknowledged that Joe Biden had made a “laborious” start but felt that he had finished “strongly” against an opponent who made a series of false or outrageous assertions without ever losing his calm or his aplomb.
PHOTO DUSTIN CHAMBERS, THE NEW YORK TIMES
Vice President Kamala Harris was interviewed on CNN by Anderson Cooper after the debate.
The 59-year-old Democrat, sent to the front Thursday evening to limit the damage, will campaign Friday in Nevada.
His name is obviously on the list of those who could replace Joe Biden in the race for the White House, alongside some prominent Democratic governors, such as Gavin Newsom in California or Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan.
If Joe Biden threw in the towel, the Democrats would meet in August in Chicago for what is called an “open” convention, during which the votes of delegates collected by the American president during the primary would be put into play.
A scenario not seen since 1968. The party then had to find a replacement for President Lyndon B. Johnson after the latter had given up running, in the middle of the Vietnam War.
Outgoing Vice President Hubert Humphrey was nominated, and lost in the election to Republican Richard Nixon.