American politics
Merciless judgment awaits Biden if he loses
Wolfgang Hansson
This is a commenting text. Analysis and positions are the writer's.
Published 15.56
Joe Biden has a tough decision to make.
Should he continue as a presidential candidate despite the clapping in the debate against Trump. Or should he step aside for a younger talent.
Biden's legacy is at stake. History's judgment on him will be merciless if he loses to Trump in November.
Quick version
I remember my first meeting with Biden during the 2020 election campaign. During the primaries in a small town in Iowa. A small election rally where I could stand very close to Biden and watch him. My gut feeling afterward was that this affable but senile man would never have a chance at being president.
The impression was reinforced a few days later at another election meeting. Biden was so slow, monotone and lack of energy that the audience had trouble staying awake.
Biden failed miserably in Iowa. But the South Carolina primary where black voters helped him win a landslide victory changed the entire dynamic. Biden became the party's candidate.
A disability
Then Biden got lucky. The pandemic allowed him to spend most of the campaign in his own home in Delaware. He avoided the normally extremely tiring election campaign with long journeys and several appearances every day. Voters never had to be regularly confronted with his visible signs of old age.
Now that veil has been torn off as brutally as definitively.
It is clear that his physical and mental status is a severe handicap in the demanding role of ruling the world's most powerful nation.
US President Joe Biden and wife Jill Biden. Photo: Gerald Herbert/AP
The judgment of the American people is harsh.
In a recent opinion poll, 72 percent of Americans say that Biden does not have the mental capacity to lead the country. An increase of seven percentage points since February.
Even his own voters condemn Biden. Close to half of the Democrats do not think he should run for re-election.
The numbers that should make any candidate do some self-examination.
The party closes its eyes
That Biden is in this situation is both his own fault and that of the Democratic Party.
No one in the inner circle has seriously dared to advise Biden to step aside. He made the decision to run for re-election himself with the support of his family.
During Biden's presidency, the White House and the elite of the Democratic Party have turned a blind eye to his increasingly obvious signs of age. Instead of questioning the reasonableness of his running again, they have tried to shield him from the public eye.
No president has given as few interviews as Joe Biden. He even declined to do the traditional televised interview before the Superbowl, the final of American football, where he could reach a huge audience.
Now leading representatives are trying to portray Biden's unprecedented breakthrough in the debate against Trump as a one-off.
He had a bad day. He had a cold. The evasions are many.
Sitting in a fox shears
All calls to replace Biden with another candidate are firmly rejected.
But behind the scenes, feverish activity is going on in the party. Discussions about persuading Biden to step aside and, if so, who would succeed him.
The pressure is increasing as a number of media heavyweights are now calling on Biden to give up his candidacy. New York Times editorial, Biden's favorite columnist Thomas Friedman, David Ignatius at the Washington Post and more.
The problem is that in the end it is Biden himself who has to make the decision.
It is urgent. If it is to happen, it must happen before the Democratic party convention in Chicago at the end of August.
Biden and the party have put themselves in a bind. They should have acted much earlier.
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