Analysis: Democrats keep pushing as Biden holds firm

President Joe Biden’s press conference didn’t end his reelection campaign on Thursday night. But it showed why it will be so hard for him to salvage it.

Biden faced his latest agonizing public test of cognition amid pressure from some Democrats, worried that he is destined to lose to former President Donald Trump, to drop out of the race.

The president’s deepening reality is that every hesitant step he takes toward confronting his greatest weakness — his age and diminished physical condition — only highlights it. And his defiant stance suggests he may be one of the last people to realize it.

“I believe I’m the best qualified to govern. And I believe I’m the best qualified to win,” Biden told reporters at the NATO summit. But as soon as he finished speaking, he suffered yet another Democratic defection — from longtime House Democrat Jim Himes — that showed much of his divided and anxious party no longer believes in him. Other lawmakers followed suit before the night was over.

The president thus finds himself in another fateful moment, accompanied by one of his most respected political allies, Nancy Pelosi. The former House speaker, who remains one of the most powerful Democrats, suggested earlier this week that despite Biden’s adamant claim that he is in the race for real, the end of the summit should usher in a new reflection. CNN reported Thursday night (11) that Pelosi and former President Barack Obama spoke privately about Biden and the future of his campaign.

Another defining moment is approaching, and Biden appears increasingly exposed.

Another deeply painful ordeal

No president has ever faced a press conference trial quite like the one Biden faced. His face twitched when reporters questioned his acuity, and he looked hurt when confronted with the words of defecting Democrats. Given that he is protected by a loyal circle of longtime friends and aides — now accused of hiding the extent of his decline — it is reasonable to wonder whether Biden was grasping the full nature of his personal and political situation for the first time.

Biden’s performance was not as disastrous as it had been in the presidential debate exactly two weeks earlier. In less tense circumstances, it might have drawn little comment. But it poignantly revealed who Biden is now: an 81-year-old man who has lost his trademark bombast and the twinkle in his Irish eyes.

At times — when Biden discussed gun violence, for example — his voice rose and he trembled with passion. At other times, his theatrical whispers betrayed his age. And as he recalled his years in the Senate and past political battles, he sounded like a grandfather recalling the triumphs and losses of a lifetime. This is happening to most octogenarians; as a sitting president who must project vitality to audiences at home and abroad, it is politically dangerous.

Still, Biden managed to address reporters for an hour, the kind of one-on-one that many Democrats have been urging him to use to fill his days. He also showed himself capable of leading nuanced discussions on national security issues — at much greater depth than Trump — and insisted that his ability to do the job and a record that rivals any modern Democratic president were proof that he was fit to serve a second term and, in its own way, a daily test of his mental resilience.

The president’s warning that he was serving as a guardian against threats to democracy was especially apt against the backdrop of the NATO summit. Biden has led the West more effectively than any president since George H.W. Bush – and he rightly argued that he was far more in tune with Americans and their fears about democracy than he was with his critics in the midterm elections.

Biden’s impossible political vortex

But while his performance on Thursday may have been good for voters already leaning toward Biden, the president desperately needs to win over undecided voters in states where the latest polls show him trailing Trump.

Every public appearance is now a walk along a cognitive wire. Every sentence could send him sprawling. And it’s all refracted through the prism of a debate with Trump that sent his campaign into a tailspin.

Even before the press conference, Biden’s evening got off to a rocky start when he mixed up the names of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his nemesis, Russian President Vladimir Putin. He quickly corrected a verbal slip-up that anyone could make. (Trump, for example, confused Pelosi with former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.) But that’s happening more and more often with the president. And shortly afterward, when a reporter asked Biden to rate his vice president’s qualities, he referred to “Vice President Trump” instead of Kamala Harris.

These missteps alone do not disqualify him from running for president. But for months, most voters have been telling pollsters that they fear Biden is too old. The debate debacle had the classic political impact of confirming a negative impression voters had already formed. And each subsequent battle has hardened it.

It’s getting harder for Democrats to tell voters to ignore the evidence in their own eyes and argue that Biden is capable of being president until January 2029.

This political vortex from which Biden cannot escape was underscored when Edward-Issac Dovere and Jeff Zeleny of CNN reported after speaking with more than a dozen members of Congress and operatives, that the end of Biden’s candidacy now seems clear, and it is just a question of how it will be done. Democrats hope that Pelosi and Obama will help end a crisis that presents the party with the important possibility of replacing its candidate a month before the convention and less than four months before the election.

“Too little, too late”

It’s an example of how grim things have been for Biden that his inconsistent press conference was greeted with relief in his camp. A White House official said Biden had demonstrated “solid command of both domestic and foreign affairs.” The official wasn’t wrong — but the comment ignored the fact that presidents are judged not only on such matters, but also on their ability to communicate and convey a sense of command.

A Democratic congressman acknowledged that Biden had been “strong” during the press conference. But he added: “This doesn’t address the long-term issues and the wins.” This is a key point. Two weeks after the debate, Biden’s campaign is not only wallowing in what he insists was “a bad night,” but also in its inability since to dispel the impression made in Atlanta.

His biggest problem—cited by every Democrat who tells him to drop out—is the sense that he is almost certain to lose to Trump and pave the way for an unfettered MAGA monopoly on power in Washington, aided by a conservative Supreme Court that is already remaking the fabric of the nation. “We are doomed if he runs. He is incapable of running a presidential campaign and risks taking the House and Senate with him,” a person directly involved in Biden’s reelection effort told MJ Lee of CNN on Thursday night.

Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told Kaitlan Collins of CNN, that his party faces a fateful question. “You have to abandon emotion and loyalty and love, and say, in the next four or five months, is this story (against Trump) going to be told with such precision and poetry and beauty that you reverse all the numbers that you say we’re going to lose?”

“Do you want to take that risk?” the Connecticut Democrat said. “Because you’re not just risking your own political reputation,” he argued, “you’re gambling on the future of the United States of America.”

Biden isn’t completely alone. Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee told Anderson Cooper of CNN, that Democrats need to stop their “fantasy games” and unite to defeat Trump. But after stalling momentum against him earlier in the week, the president now appears to be in near-terminal political decline.

His evolving tragedy is that the qualities he praised on Thursday — the wisdom of age, a strong legislative record, global statesmanship and an abiding refusal to be toppled — no longer hold up against the ravages of time and political gravity.

“I’m not in this for my legacy. I’m in this to finish the job I started,” Biden said.

But every move the president makes in explaining why he deserves a second term shows why he may be incapable of winning and serving it fully.