(Washington) Joe Biden is meeting with Democratic governors on Wednesday to try to reassure them of his ability to lead a victorious campaign against Donald Trump, something his own party has had strong doubts about since the failed debate against Donald Trump last Thursday.
Nearly a week later, the American president is far from having erased the painful impression left by these 90 minutes during which he stammered, stared into space and sometimes lost his train of thought.
This has led many Democrats, including party figures like Nancy Pelosi, to publicly question his mental acuity, even to openly call for his withdrawal, although these calls have so far been confined to a few, little-known lawmakers.
The meeting with the 81-year-old Democrat is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. ET at the White House. The United States has about 20 Democratic state governors, but the exact list of participants in the meeting has not been made public.
“Healthy discussion”
“We’ll have a healthy discussion with the president,” one of the Democratic governors, JB Pritzker of Illinois, told CNN Tuesday night.
For now, Joe Biden is our candidate, I am 100% behind his candidacy, unless he makes another decision, in which case we will all discuss the best course of action.
JB Pritzker, Democratic Governor of Illinois
The governor of Illinois, but also those of California (Gavin Newsom), Michigan (Gretchen Whitmer) and Pennsylvania (Josh Shapiro) are considered potential future candidates for the White House.
No one has so far publicly challenged the candidacy of Joe Biden, who crushed the Democratic primary and whose nomination is therefore a given, unless he voluntarily withdraws.
Polls conducted since the debate do not show a shift, which shows that Americans had not waited to worry about the cognitive abilities of the oldest president in the history of the country, but most confirm a slight advantage for Donald Trump.
Survey
A tally released Wednesday by CBS gives the former president 50% of the vote to his Democratic rival’s 48% nationally, and 51% to 48% in the decisive states, all within the statistical margin of error.
So far, there is no indication that Joe Biden is imminently stepping down.
He will be campaigning in the coming days in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, two swing states, decisive states in the race for the White House.
His campaign team released a new video on Wednesday, after the Supreme Court extended presidential immunity on Monday, a victory for Donald Trump, who has been criminally indicted several times.
The highest American court “has decided that the president can disregard the law even to commit a crime because Donald Trump asked him to,” the narrator assures, against a backdrop of images of the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 by supporters of the former president.
Travels
The message is clear: it is against the 78-year-old Republican billionaire, who never conceded defeat four years ago, that we must join forces.
The Democrat also plans to give an interview with ABC television on Friday and hold a solo news conference next week, aiming to demonstrate his ability to speak fluently without a teleprompter.
As for last Thursday’s poor performance, according to Joe Biden’s supporters, it was a “bad night” for a candidate who was suffering from more than just a “cold.”
The main person concerned put forward another explanation on Tuesday.
He told donors that it was “not very smart” to have “traveled around the world several times” shortly before the debate, and that it had led him to “almost fall asleep on stage.”
Joe Biden visited France and Italy in June, then returned to the United States on June 15, twelve days before the televised duel against Donald Trump, which he spent six days preparing for, without an official agenda or public appearance during this period.