Rarely have so many Americans been glued to a Nato livestream for so long. By the time Joe Biden walked out onto the stage for his press conference at the end of the alliance’s summit in Washington on 11 July, the appearance was being billed as a make-or-break test for his re-election campaign. It turned out to be neither.
Before the main event had even started, the US president was in trouble. Standing alongside his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky earlier that afternoon, Biden had introduced him as “President Putin.” As he walked away from the microphone, he realised his mistake and attempted to correct it. “President Putin?” he said. “We’re going to beat President Putin. President Zelensky, I’m so focused on beating Putin, we got to worry about it.” Zelensky tried to laugh it off, replying, “I’m better.”
Biden began the news conference – his first such event in eight months – by reading, or more accurately, half-yelling around eight minutes of prepared remarks from an autocue. In between listing his accomplishments, he repeatedly paused to clear his throat. Then he took the first question and mixed up Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. “Look, I wouldn’t have picked Vice President Trump to be vice-president did I think she was not qualified to be president,” he said. Later he referred to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff – the nation’s highest-ranked military officer – as “my commander in chief”, which is Biden’s job.
Misplaced names aside, Biden sounded more forceful and coherent than he did during his disastrous debate performance in Georgia a fortnight earlier – admittedly a low bar – and he demonstrated a firm command of the facts, particularly with regard to foreign policy. At one point, he delivered a seven-minute answer on US policy towards China.
But this was still not a strong performance. Biden often spoke slowly, with uncomfortably long pauses. He still trailed off mid-sentence at times and tripped over his words. When he was asked why he was best placed to beat Trump, for instance, this was the best he could offer: “I’m determined on running, but I think it’s important that I real… allay fears. I’ve seen. Let them see me out there, let me see them out, you know, for the longest time, it was, you know, ‘Biden’s not prepared to sit with us unscripted; Biden is not prepared to’, and anyway.”
Asked whether he would be ready to deal with Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping in two- or three-years’ time, he replied, “I’m ready to deal with them now and three years from now. Look, um, the, uh, like I said, I’m dealing with Xi right now. I’m in direct contact with him.”
If the 27 June debate had not been as bad as it was, we would surely be talking about how worrying this performance was. Biden did nowhere near enough to reassure those in his own party who have become convinced that he cannot beat Trump. Nor will it change the minds of the 85 per cent of American voters who say he is too old – at 81 – run again. (60 per cent say the same about Trump, who is 78). More than half of those who class themselves as Biden supporters say he should now step aside.
After the news conference ended, which had been intended to turn this around, three more congressional Democrats – Jim Himes of Connecticut, Scott Peters of California, and Eric Sorenson of Illinois – called on Biden to leave the race. This brought the total number appealling to Biden to end his campaign to 17 representatives and one senator by the end of the night. The previous day, the actor George Clooney, who had led some of the Democratic party’s biggest fundraisers, published a scathing essay in the New York Times calling for a new nominee. CNN reported that two of the party’s most senior figures – former house speaker Nancy Pelosi and former president Barack Obama – have privately discussed their concerns.
Yet Biden is defiant. He shows no sign of contemplating a voluntary departure from the race, and this latest performance wasn’t quite bad enough to force him to do so. The president and those around him continue to insist that he is the only Democrat who can beat Donald Trump because he is the only one who has done so before, and that anyone who dares to say otherwise is disloyal. In recent days, he has railed in a vaguely Trumpian fashion against “elites” and the media, demanding that his critics within the party shut up and fall into line. He said last night that he would only consider dropping out if he was shown clear evidence that he couldn’t win, which is at least nominal progress from his earlier statement (in an interview with ABC News on 5 July) that it only an intervention from “the Lord Almighty” would cause him to reassess.
“No one’s saying that,” he insisted in an emphatic whisper at the end of his press conference. “No poll says that.”
Privately, plenty of Democrats are saying exactly that. They fear that Biden is on course to lose this election, and with it, perhaps the House and Senate too. They also know that they are running out of time to act. There are 38 days until the Democratic convention begins in Chicago on 19 August. If Biden is confirmed as the party’s nominee there, then it will be too late to change course. Any serious challenge will need to come in the waning days and weeks before that.
[See also: Biden’s only choice]
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