Biden has a new line for his detractors: If I go down, I’m taking you all with me. It’s a disturbing sentiment coming from a man who is supposedly known for his empathetic personality. This defiance reeks of ego and desperation. Biden is still reeling from his disastrous debate with Donald Trump on June 27, which triggered this avalanche of panic and mayhem within the Democratic Party. A decent chunk of the party privately feels he can’t win. Donors have stopped cutting checks, increasing the president’s anger over the subject.
Now, Hollywood’s elite are starting to clamor for a new nominee, with George Clooney penning a damning op-ed in The New York Times where he said the president he saw at that ritzy Los Angeles fundraiser with Obama was the same man who showed up to get pummeled by Trump. That debate cemented what many of us had known for years: Biden is too old for the job. Three-fourths of the nation thinks he’s too old to be effective. The only way to combat that is for Biden to get out there, do pressers, be unfiltered, and show he has vigor. He doesn’t. The staff maintaining this iron curtain around the president indicates his inner circle’s trepidation about cutting the man loose.
Biden said he was gassed after two trips overseas. He was off for two weeks before the debate. It’s not a cold or exhaustion. It’s his age. Supposedly, he’s only semi-lucid for six hours, between 10 am and 4 pm. The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson highlighted this Catch-22 for the Biden camp, where he says he feels genuine sadness for them since there’s no winning here. He feels that age is why Biden is losing, and the issue itself is a loser for the president. It’s “unsolvable,” with a campaign operation that has no real plan to address it in which they don’t look like they’re marinading in denialism:
Where I am:
— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) July 9, 2024
1. Biden is running consistently behind not only Trump but also swing-state Democratic senators, suggesting he faces not only an R vs. D problem but a Biden-specific problem.
2. The Biden problem is clear: Voters think he's too old.
3. There's no plan to fix it.… https://t.co/RRtjPyRKVS
Biden is running consistently behind not only Trump but also swing-state Democratic senators, suggesting he faces not only an R vs. D problem but a Biden-specific problem.
The Biden problem is clear: Voters think he's too old.
There's no plan to fix it. The underlying problem itself is unsolvable: Time is an arrow. The consequence is obvious: Every unscripted Biden TV appearance these days has viral moments of scrambled thinking, aborted sentences, and logical inconsistencies, which testify and solidify the age thing.
So the campaign (which I feel some real sympathy for) is left with a strategic Catch-22. All efforts to reduce the salience of Biden's age ironically do the opposite: keeping him away from reporters raises questions, and putting him on camera creates moments.
Replacing Biden with Kamala is incredibly risky. Holding a mini primary is ludicrously risky. There's no point in downplaying the risks here. But high-risk high-reward strategies become more rational as you become more confident in your disadvantage.
I think the main difference between where I am vs. where Biden defenders are is that I've become really, really, really confident that Biden's age—not Trump, not Project 2025, not January 6, Biden's age—is the durable centerpiece of this election. It is a profoundly losing issue. And it's not a solvable problem.
See Part 1.
— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) July 9, 2024
If (D) candidates were getting walloped in, eg, Wisconsin, I'd say it doesn't matter who you run at the top of the ticket, the party is just overwhelmingly screwed.
But swing-state Democrats are running double digits ahead of the president!https://t.co/vUiscY6Qct
That’s something the president and his team don’t want to hear, which explains the serial efforts to pivot away from age. It hasn’t worked because we’re not that dumb, though maybe Biden is for thinking this would sell. They want this June 27 debate to be over—that’s not how this works, Joe, especially when you have a historically terrible performance.
The president needs to realize that he’s old and losing to Trump. His polls, whatever North Korean algorithm they have for gauging this race, are beyond fugazi, though when Joe doesn’t like hearing something, he rages. Maybe that’s the second layer to this: no good advice can be relayed out of fear of grandpa hurling his Ensure at the face of aides.
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