Democratic lawmakers in the US Congress have of late been concerned, indeed very concerned, about Joe Biden, the president of the United States and the putative leader of “the free world”, whose disastrous performance at the presidential debate two weeks ago left a nation shocked as it watched its chief executive repeatedly losing his train of thought and mumbling incoherencies, at times as if seemingly to himself.
So concerned were they on Tuesday that a meeting of the House Democratic caucus was held in the morning and a gathering of Senate Democrats was held in the afternoon, both behind closed doors, to discuss the best way forward, effectively determining the president’s political career — all that before the American leader was to deliver a speech in the evening commemorating the 75th anniversary of Nato at that alliance’s three-day summit in Washington — a speech that, mercifully, was read off the teleprompter.
Virtually every single day that President Biden has had since that debate on June 27 has been a bad hair day, with the media and not altogether too few Democrats questioning his suitability as the Democratic Party’s nominee for president. And the argument advanced by his supporters and close aides that he was not, in effect, damaged goods, that his embarrassing performance was a one-off, to be blamed on a cold, jet lag, lack of sleep, fatigue and the rest of it didn’t wash.
Series of gaffes
Moreover, the president’s week got worse when he mangled his words during an interview with Philadelphia’s WURD Radio, a station with a predominantly Black audience, where he referred to his vice president, Kamala Harris and former president Barack Obama, saying, “And, by the way, I’m proud to be, as I said, the first vice president, the first Black woman to serve with a Black president”.
The media, whose punditocracy is not known to be kind to errant political leaders, has been relentless in calling on President Biden to step aside, with the New York Times saying in an editorial on June 28, a mere twenty four hours after the debate, that “to serve his country, President Biden should leave the race”, followed by a yet more scathing one this past Monday, in which the paper’s editorial board renewed its call, this time claing that only Democratic Party leaders can speak plainly to the embattled President and convince him to let go.
And through it all, President Joe Biden has strangely held his ground, unswayed in his determination to run for a second term, all the while schlepping along, depending on his aides for damage control.
Soon after the debate, for example, these aides devised a plan to have him appear before a raucous crowd in North Carolina where he delivered a speech intended to project vigour. composure and mental alertness — while he read from a teleprompter. Predictably, the speech was none of the above but it was one in which he admitted that, yes, he had had a “bad night” the night he locked horns with Donald Trump but, he hollered, “I know what I do know. I know how to do this job”.
Staying in the race?
And as recently as last Monday, Biden called, via telephone from the White House, into MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” TV talk show, which is watched by a million viewers between 6 and 10 o’clock every morning, and emphatically told host Joe Scarborough, “I’m not going anywhere, I’m not going anywhere”, then added, equally emphatically, “Look, I couldn’t be running [for office in the presidential election in November] if I didn’t absolutely believe that I’m the best candidate to beat Donald Trump”.
Only an incumbent president who has, since June 28, ignored the critics from his own party, failed to head off more and more defections from his camp and dismissed the polls, which showed his approval rating standing at a dismal 39 per cent, with fully 77 per cent of US adults considering him “too old” to be effective for four more years, would vow, improbably, as Joe Biden has done, to stay in the race, come what may, hell or high water.
Look, we all know Joe Biden — Joe Biden the dedicated lawmaker whose political career spans half a century of public serce, Joe Biden the ordinary man who suffered terrible personal tragedies and Joe Biden the experienced politician who was seen, close to four years ago, as the chief executive tasked with healing the wounds of a polarised nation, lifting the country from the gloom of the pandemic — and, alas, also Joe Biden the enabler, who made possible, permissible and even excusable Netanyahu’s actions in Gaza.
Whatever, whichever. It is time for this “elderly man with a bad memory”, as Special Counsel Robert Hur described this Joe Biden last March in a report detailing his year-long inquiry into the president’s handling of classified documents, to take a final bow and pass the baton to a new, younger and, let’s say, more tuned-in Democratic figure.
— Fawaz Turki is a noted academic, journalist and author based in Washington DC. He is the author of The Disinherited: Journal of a Palestinian Exile
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