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More Biden gaffes add to clamour for change
Despite growing concerns about his mental sharpness and candidacy, President Biden doubled down on staying in the race, facing pressure to withdraw.
He introduced Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky as President (Vladimir) Putin, before realising he had fumbled, at a Nato event. He identified his own vice president, Kamala Harris, as Vice President (Donald) Trump at a subsequent press conference that, ironically, was meant to allay apprehensions about his mental sharpness. The number of Democrats on Capitol Hill who have asked him to leave the race kept steadily climbing up (18 lawmakers want him out now), while donors froze their funding and voters told pollsters that it was time for him to go.
But notwithstanding the gaffes and the growing disquiet about his candidacy, US President Joe Biden doubled down on his decision to stay on in the presidential race on Thursday at the end of the Nato summit in Washington DC as he faced the press for an hour.
Biden asserted that he was the “most qualified” to both defeat the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, and govern the country. He claimed he didn’t hand over leadership to the next generation despite promising to be a “bridge candidate” in 2020 because of the gravity of the situation he had inherited. He said that he would only withdraw from the race if his team told him that there was “no way” he could win while lauding Harris’s strengths. He acknowledged that he needed to “pace himself better” and called his debate performance a “stupid mistake”, but also claimed doctors had told him he was fine and hadn’t recommended any cognitive test. He sought to portray age as an advantage and claimed it gave “wisdom”.
But it may not be enough, for the clamour among Democrats, fearful that having Biden at the top of the ticket will lead to the party losing the White House, Senate and House of Representatives this November, about the need for an alternate candidate continued to grow.
Minutes after his press conference ended, Jim Himes, a top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, called on the President to drop out. Two other House colleagues joined him soon after. Jim Clyburn, among Biden’s closest allies and the most prominent Black leader in the House, said on Friday that while he was “all-in” on Biden, there was time for a change. “If he decides to change his mind later on, then we will respond to that. We have until the 19th of August to open our convention,” he said.
Reports indicated that both former House speaker Nancy Pelosi and former US President Barack Obama had spoken to each other, concerned about the Biden candidacy, and actor George Clooney had spoken to Obama before publishing his piece in New York Times asking Biden to quit. The Times also reported that donors had frozen $90 million in promised funding to a super political action committee (PAC) for the Biden campaign if he remained on to of the ticket. And a new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, published on Friday, found that 67% Americans, including 56%, Democrats want Biden to drop out.
At the press conference though, the 81-year old Biden said he was determined to stay in the race. The President was sharper than he was during the debate with Trump on June 27, but the shadow of the debate continued to haunt Biden and his fumbles acquired a new significance.
It didn’t begin well, for when asked if he thought Harris was qualified to be President, Biden said, “Look, I wouldn’t have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president [if] I think she’s not qualified to be president.” Trump caught on to the gaffe and posted the statement on Truth Social with a barb, “Good job, Joe!”
When a reporter asked how he would continue in the job for four more years when he had acknowledged his limitations, alluding to reporting that suggested that Biden had said he needed to end his days at 8pm, the President responded, “What I said was: Instead of my every day starting at 7 and going to bed at midnight, it’d be smarter for me to pace myself a little more…instead of starting a fundraiser at 9 o’clock, start at 8 o’clock. People get to go home at 10 o’clock.”
Asked how he would reassure European leaders worried about a Trump presidency, Biden said, “I’m not having any of my European allies come up to me and say, ‘Joe, don’t run’. What I hear them say is, ‘You’ve got to win. You can’t let this guy come forward. He’d be a disaster. He’d be a disaster’.”
Biden, in 2020, had referred to himself as a bridge candidate to a next generation of Democratic leaders. Asked what had changed for him to stay on in the race, Biden said, “What changed was the gravity of the situation I inherited in terms of the economy, our foreign policy, and domestic division… what I realised was, my long time in the Senate had equipped me to have the wisdom to know how to deal with the Congress to get things done. We got more major legislation passed that no one thought would happen. And I want to finish it.”
Asked if he was still thinking about his candidacy depending on how the next few weeks shaped up or if he was determined to run, the President said he was determined to run. But he also acknowledged concerns, though he didn’t frame his sentences in a coherent or complete manner. According to the transcript released by the White House, Biden said, “I think it’s important that I reali- — I allay fears by seeing — let them see me out there. Let me see them out — you know, for the longest time it was, you know, ‘Biden is not prepared to sit with us unscripted. Biden is not prepared to’ — you know, anyway. And so, what I’m doing, and it’s what I’ve been doing — I think we’ve done over 20 major events, from Wisconsin to North Carolina to — anyway — to demonstrate that I am going out in the areas where we think we can win, where we can persuade people to move our way or people are already there.”
As he was walking off the state, a reporter shouted and told Biden that Trump was mocking his initial gaffe about mistaking Harris for him. Biden laughed and said, “Listen to him.”
