Biden Press Conference Doesn’t Stop Bleeding
A relatively strong performance doesn't change the narrative.
President Biden delivered 8 minutes of prepared remarks and then fielded questions from a hostile press corps for roughly the remainder of an hour at the conclusion of the NATO Summit yesterday evening. It took place while we were preparing and eating dinner, so I didn’t watch it live. The few minutes of it I saw this morning reinforced my existing beliefs that he’s far and away a better choice to lead American foreign policy than his opponent and that he’s lost several steps as a communicator.
A pair of verbal flubs are being highlighted in the press coverage:
Toward the beginning of the question-and-answer, Biden mistakenly referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as former President Donald Trump. It was exactly the type of slip-up the White House and Biden’s campaign presumably would have feared amid mounting questions surrounding his mental acuity.
“I wouldn’t have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president did I think she was not qualified to be president,” he said.
The president did not correct himself. He made a similar mistake earlier in the day, accidentally calling Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky “President Putin” while introducing him during a NATO event.
Those slips were, to say the least, unfortunate but, frankly, the sort of thing all of us do from time to time. Unfortunately, coming in the midst of a push to replace him as the Democratic nominee, they amplify the fear that he’s too old to do the job and, especially, to defeat Donald Trump in November.
Indeed, three more House Democrats joined the list of those calling on Biden to step aside:
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Jim Himes, called on Biden to step aside almost at the exact time the news conference ended. He was the first House Democrat to call on the president to leave the ticket after the news conference, but not the last.
“It is because of those traits and, and in consideration of that legacy, that I hope President Biden will step away from the presidential campaign,” he said on X.
Not long after Himes, California Democrat Rep. Scott Peters issued his own call for Biden to withdraw his candidacy. Peters is a prominent Democrat among the center-left.
“Today I ask President Biden to withdraw from the presidential campaign,” the San Diego Democrat wrote in a statement shared with CNN.
Illinois Rep. Eric Sorensen soon after became the 17th Democrat on Capitol Hill to call for the president to step aside.
“In 2020, Joe Biden ran for President with the purpose of putting country over party. Today, I am asking him to do that again,” Sorensen said in a statement on X. “I am hopeful President Biden will step aside in his campaign for President.
And CBS News‘s Margaret Brennan reports “Potentially dozens of Democrats expected to call on Biden to step aside after NATO conference.”
Four Democratic sources with knowledge tell CBS News that they expect dozens of Democratic lawmakers over the next 48 hours to issue statements calling for President Biden to step out of the race.
The planning is coordinated, and some of the statements are pre-written, according to two sources. And it’s not clear that anything Mr. Biden said in his high-stakes press conference Thursday night could redirect the expected course of events.
House Democratic leadership has indicated to members that they should speak their minds, multiple sources told CBS News. One of those well-placed sources predicted that the next three to four days will be “brutal,” and that it may become untenable by sometime next week for the president to continue in the race.
CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere and Jeff Zeleny (“Obama, Pelosi privately expressed concerns over Biden“) answer a question I had yesterday morning:
Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi have spoken privately about Joe Biden and the future of his 2024 campaign. Both the former president and ex-speaker expressed concerns about how much harder they think it’s become for the president to beat Donald Trump. Neither is quite sure what to do.
Democrats are desperate for the dispiriting infighting to end so they can get back to trying to beat the former president. And they’re begging either Obama or Pelosi to help them get there, aware that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer doesn’t have the trust of Biden and that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries doesn’t have the depth of relationship to deliver the message.
[…]
Obama’s decision not to make any public comment for two weeks has left a number of leading Democrats feeling like he has left them flailing by holding to the same posture that has largely defined his post-presidency. After the debate, he posted on X, “Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know,” reiterating that sentiment at a fundraiser in New York for House Democrats the night after Biden’s performance. The former president hadn’t even planned to make any public statement, but Biden and Obama aides coordinated to get that post out in a way that reflected Biden campaign talking points that Obama’s first reelection debate in 2012 went badly, too, and it didn’t end up ending his campaign.
But Obama’s deepening skepticism about his friend’s ability to win reelection is one of the worst kept secrets in Washington.
When the history of this extraordinary two-week period of American politics is written, the fingerprints of Obama and Pelosi will be far more apparent than currently known, people familiar with the matter tell CNN, as the Democratic elders have served as a guidepost for a party in panic.
[…]
Obama has been fielding more calls than he’s making, people who have spoken to him say. When he does talk to anxious Democratic donors and officials, he’s been listening more than talking, carefully avoiding taking positions that he assumes would quickly leak.
That was also Obama’s approach to the call he had with Biden after the debate, which the current president has suggested to others included the former president being supportive of him riding out the turmoil. According to others familiar with the call, though, Obama stuck to his posture of being a “sounding board and private counselor.” He prodded. He played devil’s advocate. But he did not take a position.
[…]
If the former president did try to steer Biden to get out, people who know Obama say, he is aware the prism through which it could be seen. Biden has written that he felt Obama was not encouraging of his jumping in late to the Democratic primaries in the months after his son Beau died in 2015. Though Obama believes that he was trying to help his then-vice president focus on his grief and not wade into what would have been an incredibly hard primary campaign against Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, that may not be how another conversation would go.
“Biden would say, ‘Well, Mr. President, you already used that chip in 2015 and it got us Donald Trump,’” speculated a longtime 2020 campaign aide. “I think it would harden him more.”
Axios honchos Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen have coined the phrase “Committee to Unelect the President” to for what they describe as a loosely-organized group of “very-connected Democrats, mostly veterans of the Obama and Clinton administrations, [who] are plotting hourly to get [Biden] to withdraw quickly.” They have no leader or organization but are “trading texts, emails and polling, fighting fellow Democrats on TV and X, and circulating stories and arguments by sympathetic journalists and columnists.”
The committee includes:
- Former Obama aides: The strained relationship between Obama and Biden extends to their former aides, including David Axelrod (Obama’s ruthlessly pragmatic chief strategist) and the influential “Pod Save America” guys. Biden has reportedly called Axelrod a “prick,” and threw shade at him — “Oh! You’re kidding” — during Monday’s call-in on “Morning Joe.” The pod guys — Obama alumni Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Tommy Vietor and Dan Pfeiffer — have irritated Biden’s camp by arguing for a new candidate. Lovett writes that it’s “hard to deny that in the two weeks since the debate, it’s the arrogant and small Joe Biden we’ve seen most.”
- Former Clinton advisers: Carville, appearing all over the cable dial, says unsparingly that a new candidate is inevitable, whether the president admits it or not. Keeping him would be “an idiotic choice for the future of this country,” Carville told Anderson Cooper on CNN.
- Elected Dems: Massive pressure is building from rank-and-file members of the Democratic caucus. One Democratic senator (Peter Welch of Vermont) and 17 House Democrats have publicly called for Biden to drop out. Scores more are furious at the White House for pushing them to support a president they view as unelectable.
- Swing-seat Dems: This is the group that really matters. Vulnerable Democrats have a clear-eyed view of the president’s prospects. These Dems will abandon him — some already have — if they sense their seats are in jeopardy.
- The donor class: George Clooney, who headlined the largest fundraiser in Democratic Party history last month, is the leading voice of a growing number of Hollywood types who want Biden to end his candidacy. The group includes Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings and Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel (Rahm’s brother).
- Late-night liberals: Stephen Colbert — who moderated a major Biden fundraiser at Radio City in March — strongly suggested the president should step aside: “I think that Biden debated as well as Abraham Lincoln, if you dug him up right now.” Jon Stewart has escalated pleas for the nominee to be someone else. He hosted Favreau and Vietor on his podcast yesterday.
- N.Y. Times Opinion: Debate-night columns by Tom Friedman and Nick Kristoff gave way to full-throated editorials — all saying Biden must go.
- Biden aides busily leaking: “Some longtime aides and advisers to President Biden,” the N.Y. Times reports, “have become increasingly convinced that he will have to step aside from the campaign, and in recent days they have been trying to come up with ways to persuade him that he should.”
This is just the damnedest thing I’ve seen in the 45 years I’ve been paying attention to American politics. To be sure, we’ve had unpopular Presidents face pressure from their party. Lyndon Johnson dropped out of the 1968 race after early primaries showed his ultimate fate—but I was two years old and living in Germany at the time. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter faced significant primary challenges and George H.W. Bush a modest one. But those were all fights over electability and the direction of the party, not the basic competence of the incumbent President.
Every instinct I have points to Biden’s removal being inevitable. But, of course, barring actual intervention from the Lord Almighty, the only person who can force Biden out is Biden. If he wants to go on, he goes on.
Washington Post Poll Aggregator:
WI: Tie
PA: Tie
MI: 3 Trump
NC: 5 Trump
NV: 5 Trump
AZ: 5 Trump
GA: 6 Trump
Right now the electoral vote count would be Trump with 282 EV’s, even if WI and PA stay blue. And there’s the question of the split votes in NB or ME.
We would need, in addition to holding WI and PA, and taking either the NB or ME split, to take NC, or MI plus NV. We don’t have much on NH, VA or MN, which could flip.
Our rock solids come to 218. The GOP rock solids total 236. The magic number is 270.
ETA: Our hope lies in Project 2025.
(Check my math – not my best subject.)
More to the point, those slips are classic Biden gaffes, so nothing new.
This is going to be a disaster. If Biden capitulates, the Republicans are going to have a FIELD DAY tearing apart Harris, who, I repeat, is the only possible option. The problem is, all of the Democrats calling for Biden to step down have different views on what is “possible,” with most of them advocating for unicorn scenarios that come from watching too much West Wing and House of Cards.
JFC.
@Bobert: Good point. Still, it’s interesting to watch the Democratic Party committing seppuku in real time and on mass, at least for me it is. And Dr. Joyner is right, it’s a first.
Biden was always an uphill pull for reelection and the Dems have always known this. Sadly, Biden was also the best (some might say only) bet for keeping the WH. Welcome to Unintended Consequences Land! Enjoy your visit! 🙁
@Jen:
They won’t have a field day going after Biden? Have you considered the ads they can put together of Joe mumbling and staring vacantly and calling Zelensky, Putin? Do you think Joe will agree to a second debate? Do you think he’s the guy to advance one of our strongest issues, abortion?
We are left to hope that for once in their brain-dead lives, American voters will connect with larger policy issues rather than appearances. But this is the electorate that already elected Trump once, and in polling is tied. The electorate that couldn’t find Ukraine on a wall map of Ukraine. The electorate that lost its mind because they had to wear masks. The electorate that thinks the world is ending because we have just about the lowest inflation rate in the developed world.
If Joe won’t go, I’ll still max my contributions and look for a PAC to add more. Balls to the wall for our Weekend at Bernie’s candidate.
2024, and in this, the world’s greatest democracy and only real superpower, this is what we’ve got. Senile v. Psychopath. If I believed in God I’d be on my fucking knees. Instead I’ll just take up day drinking.
Biden thoughtfully answered complex foreign policy questions for an hour and knocked it out of the park. Do you think anyone in our asshole media will demand Convicted Felon Trump do the same? Not a chance.
Do you think any of the deranged smear artists who sent the past two weeks falsely claiming Biden is a cognitively debilitated “Weekend At Bernie’s” act not up to tje job will say they were wrong? Not a chance.
Because they are the opposite of Joe Biden: lying scumbags. Not good people. Not fit to lick the inside of Biden’s toilet.
Because the corporate media is odious and in the tank for Republicans. We didn’t get a single topline headline about Trump repeatedly saying he was running against President Obama, calling Melania “Mercedes,” or confusing Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi multiple times.
The elite media is slanderous, unhinged, dishonest, and showing why they are widely and rightly loathed. They want to stage a coup and destroy Biden just like they destroyed Kerry and Hillary. They’ll have to get through the Democratic base first, and good luck with that.
@Michael Reynolds: Oh, they’ll definitely go after Biden. And I’m beyond scared that something even worse is going to happen, closer to the election.
But Harris would need to be polling well ahead of Biden right now to be able to lose ground (which she will) and then regain it. This is basic electoral strategy. Euphoria phase (a new face!), then the negatives hit and there will be a dip (She’s unlikable! She’s untested!), and then you need to have enough time to build your case.
And even that’s not a given. Clooney seems to think that we’ll have an open field, and that all of the options will be nice to each other. Carville wants FOUR regional primaries. Others want Harris. They’re somewhat united on Biden stepping down, but that’s where the agreement ends. If I had ANY confidence that the Democrats had their act together, I might be singing a different tune.
@DK:
You’ve gone right off the deep end. Elites! White elites! White male elites! Conspiracies all around us! The racist, sexist media trying to push out a White man in favor of a Black woman! Evil!
You’re a Blue MAGA, screaming that everyone needs to fall in line and pretend that we didn’t see what we saw.
Useful idiots whose entire personalities and careers are based on having had the luck to latch themselves onto generational political talents.
And what do they have in common?
Oh, that’s right, even Republicans are noticing:
Dang. When you’re a former Obama staffer who understands the Democratic base less than Erick Erickson, it’s time to pack it in and go re-evaluate your life.
@Michael Reynolds:
You’re an actual MAGA and a lying dirtbag who’d fall flat on your face if you had to do what Biden did last night. We saw Biden answer complex, detailed policy questions last night for an hour. That’s what we saw.
You’re a liar and an easy-manipulated tool for the media.
Hilarious from a liar who spent the past two weeks pushing the MAGA conspiracy that Biden can barely function and was being propped up by evil Jill Biden.
You’re in debilitating cognitive decline. Biden is older, slower, and has a stutter. And unlike you, he’s not a pathological liar.
El Cid, that’s what I’ve been thinking of. In the legend they tie a dead Cid to a horse and he leads the charge against the Moors.
@Michael Reynolds: Did you watch the presser? If you didn’t, you should. Then come back and tell us if you still think Biden is senile. If you did watch it and still think that, I’ll just say I very strongly disagree.
Why are the media focusing on a single gaffe of the kind literally every human being has made more than once in their life, rather than his adept handling of an hour-long press conference during which he answered multiple complex questions on foreign and domestic policy?
I know, I know, style over substance wins every time. May the God neither of us believes in help us.
@DK:
Yes, I am. I’ll be 70 very soon, and words don’t come as quickly as they used to. I don’t have the stamina or the energy I once had. In ten years I’ll be where Biden is. I don’t pretend nothing has changed and age has had no effect. I’ll stick with reality.
And don’t call me a liar or I’ll have to ask you to supply a single instance where I’ve lied here. And you won’t be able to.
@Mikey:
I did, and Biden did well in an area where he has deep knowledge. It was encouraging.
I also saw him stare blankly and have no response when Trump said we’re engaging in post-natal abortion. Don’t you think Harris would have handled that moment much better? Or literally any of us here?
Dan Cluchey:
Brian Stelter:
Dr. Vin Gupta:
Jill Wine-Banks:
Charles Gaba:
Sarah Reese-Jones:
Michael A. Cohen:
Liars gonna lie tho. Anyone who continues to insist Joe Biden is a Weekend at Bernie’s candidate is just a flat-out, bold-faced thug of a liar. They can say they want Biden to drop out because they don’t think he’s going to win, but hopelessly cognitively debilitated? Garbage lie.
@Michael Reynolds: Fuck Biden? If you can’t give concrete examples of his senility in the performance of his duties as president, then maybe you are the one that is wrong. You seem to have an unshakable belief in your ability to diagnose mental illnesses from verbal gaffes while not even acknowledging that Biden gave coherent, thoughtful answers to the questions he was asked. But yes, the 81 year old stutterer garbled a few words along the way but what the fuck good is an intelligent policy position if the “optics” aren’t perfect. And to make those ridiculous accusations against DK make me wonder if that was you or the booze talking. I didn’t know stupid personal attacks were part of your verbal toolbox.
@Michael Reynolds: Let’s split the difference: He’s gone off the deep end and he’s not wrong about the deranged smear artists. Problem solved.
@Fog:
In the performance of his duties he’s been – as I’ve said many, many times – the best president of my lifetime. But that’s not the same as campaigning. People who know and like him say that up close and personal, he’s not the guy he used to be. I don’t think the way forward should be denial. If Joe’s staying in, we have to admit what everyone knows, which is that he is aging rapidly, that he’s not the guy he was. Then we have to pivot to, Trump is far worse.
The US is unique in that it remains religious in an increasingly secular world. We are also unique in that we are an active military power. Both of those incline Americans to choose the ‘strong horse’ candidate.
Another thing. Negative campaigning is meant to define the opponent. Trump is defined. Just about half the country loves him, just about half the country loathes him. You can’t define what’s already defined. All his bullshit is priced in, and he still has almost half the country.
Which is why, as I said above, we have to hope voters develop a taste for policy.
@Mikey:
Because the press conference exposed them as dishonest clowns, which will make them hate Biden even more. They painted themselves into a corner with the past two weeks of sleazy, slimy mass hysterics — and now they want their pound of flesh. Media elites are avatars of narcissism and incapable of accountability, so they cannot turn back now.
Biden is also backed by the “wrong” people — namely black voters:
Why? Because this:
(And they also know what will be done to Kamala Harris in Biden’s absence, as they live it every day.)
If you are running for POTUS there should be no question that in the normal course of events you will be capable of serving the full four year term. This excludes unforeseen illnesses like, accidents, family tragedies. Biden does not meet that test.
I think folks should listen to Jen.
@Michael Reynolds: Which is why, as I said above, we have to hope voters develop a taste for policy.
You could write a science fiction novel with that as the main concept, but I think you might have trouble getting it published, nobody would ever believe it.
The narrative is set and the battle lines drawn. Calls for Biden to drop out will continue until election day, or when he drops out (or dies or has a stroke or something like that).
If he stays and loses, he will be blamed for not dropping out. Those who insist he do so, will spend the next 4 years reminding us.
If he steps down and Unbeatable Democrat 1.0 loses, those who insisted Biden stay will spend the next for years blaming those who made Biden drop out of the race.
Counterfactual aren’t falsifiable.
At this point I want either Biden or Unbeatable Democrat 1.0 to win not so much to keep Wannabehitler from destroying America, but to be spared the endless arguments and flamewars that would follow a loss.
@Steven L. Taylor: Naahh! She was only a footsoldier. What would she know about war? /snark
With the circular firing squad circling and firing, there’s no way that Biden can win. He needs to either get out, or demonstrate that he’s fit consistently enough that the furor dries up. There have long been fears that he’s too old, that debate performance pushed those fears out into the open, and even if isn’t slipping he still has to actively allay those fears.
I’m thinking twice-weekly press conferences of about an hour.
Yes, this is literally making an old man do feats of strength until the narrative changes to “wow, it’s amazing how much better he is than we thought.” It would also get him prepped for the September debate and keep him prepped.
There are seven stories on Yahoo news about Biden dropping out or hurting the party.
@Gustopher:
I think it is important to note that if he gets out, the circular firing squad will continue, just about Harris unless she is unambiguously ahead. If, as I expect would be true, the basic dynamics don’t change, the circular firing squad will then be about how a mistake was made in switching.
@Michael Reynolds: Seriously MR, nobody outside of White Liberals gives a flying flip that Biden doesn’t give them the zingers and on-demand witty quips they want.
Who do you think that appeals too? Besides other egg heads? In reality, the ability to be a smart ass on queue—is what makes the subset of “Not white liberals” dislike said white liberals. Karen’s & Kevins lol.
Again, we’ve gotten to the root of the problem: Biden is a terrible mouthpiece for the 2nd most important, but wealthiest Dem constituency. Yes, yes, he does the job—but they don’t get the satisfaction of hearing him say the things they’d like to personally say to Trump. Therefore Biden not Trump must go.
Meanwhile, the Black and Brown coalitions are expected to abandon the candidate that promised them a lot—for an unknown candidate that promised the nothing.
Country over Party my Ass. Go watch the old Clinton /Trump debates for your zingers.
@Steven L. Taylor: BOOM!!! Nailed it in one shot! Thank you!!
@Jim Brown 32: You get a “BOOM!!! Nailed it in one” also. And Thank You, again!
CNN interviews a black Michigan voter about Biden: