The last weekend of June has arrived in the United States, bringing stifling temperatures and an extraordinary crisis within the Democratic Party over what to do about their president.
By the early hours of Friday morning, the general Democratic dread generated by Joe Biden’s faltering, weak-voiced and at times bewildering performance in his televised presidential election debate against Donald Trump on Thursday night had overshadowed the event itself. Replacing Mr Biden as the Democratic nominee for president flipped from a whispered rumour around Capitol Hill to a national conversation dominating the television shows and the headlines on Friday.
Donald Trump had been grouchy and belligerent in his performance and, the fact-checkers confirmed afterwards, delivered dozens of untruths. But he looked dynamic next to his opponent and nemesis. And that was enough. Polls were unanimous in declaring the Republican candidate for November’s election the overwhelming victor and national confidence in Biden’s ability to continue for another four years dipped to a new low.
All the worst nightmares of Democratic strategists had materialised on the worst possible stage: broadcast as a reality from the eerie, closed-set studio on the edge of Martin Luther King’s birth city to homes across the country. Party spokespeople quickly moved to distance themselves from the suggestion that Mr Biden will be replaced as nominee or may step down. But the idea is out there now.
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Only four years separate the candidates but in demographics and personality they represent two distinct American eras. Joe Biden was born in 1942: a paid-up member of the Silent Generation, and that folksy sensibility showed on Thursday night in some of his chosen phrases. When has any American under the age of 50 last heard the word “malarkey” or that lost phrase he fired at Donald Trump: “the morals of an alley cat”?
To the end, the Democratic strategists gambled that Biden’s qualities of resilience, integrity and civility would shine through in the debate.
Trump came roaring into the world just four years later but was shaped by his family’s nouveau wealth and has successfully rebranded himself from his original role as the gaudy king of New York bling to a political poltergeist, running amok in Congress, in the supreme court, in foreign policy and pushing the US into a place where the phrase “threat to democracy” is as common as “have a good day”.
If they share anything, it is a stubborn belief that they can – and must – go on forever. In 2020, Biden drew 81 million votes, the highest in US electoral history. Trump, in losing the White House, attracted 74 million votes – more than any previous victor. Now, they return as deeply unpopular candidates whose voices and appearances have exhausted their audience, their country.
This is a time when western society has placed an absolute premium on youthfulness. So, there was something unforgiving and even cruel about watching the 81-year-old Biden exposed not by the wiles or mastery of a political opponent but by time itself.
He is too stubborn, too proud to see that for himself. On Friday, he campaigned in Raleigh, North Carolina and was scheduled to travel to New York for a fundraiser. The Biden promise to save democracy, as the US prepares for its July 4th celebrations, is disintegrating before his eyes. If he somehow recovers from this, it will be the defining moment of his 50-year political life. But suddenly, November seems very far away.
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