Today's recap
Democrats are divided after Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance and subsequent gaffes that have thrown into question the viability of the campaign. Biden remained defiant, even as Democrats in Congress and donors joined a growing chorus calling for the president to step aside.
Congressional Democrats are to hold an emergency Sunday meeting to discuss Joe Biden’s tottering presidential candidacy after a primetime television interview failed to dispel doubts triggered by last week’s debate fiasco. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrats’ leader in the House of Representatives, scheduled the meeting for Sunday even as Biden struck a defiant posture in Friday’s interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
Gavin Newsom, the California governor who has been widely discussed as a potential successor to Biden, is campaigning for the president today in Pennsylvania’s Bucks county, a key political battleground.The governor cast the election as one that is “about liberalism versus illiberalism”, highlighting the threats Trump poses to American democracy, and emphasizing Biden’s economic record.
Representative Angie Craig, a Democrat of Minnesota, is among the latest to call on Biden to exit the presidential race. Craig represents a swing district in suburban Minneapolis-St Paul. Some Democrats are concerned that Biden’s flailing candidacy could drag down House and Senate candidates down-ballot.
Donald Trump broke his silence on the doubts swirling around Joe Biden’s candidacy following last month’s debate debacle with a characteristically mocking social post urging Biden to stay in the race.
Biden is now leading Trump in Michigan and Wisconsin, according to the latest Bloomberg/Morning Consult tracking poll of battleground states. In Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, the president is within the poll’s statistical margin of error.
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What happens if Biden does decide to step away? Time is short to make a change.
The Democratic National Committee announced weeks ago that it would hold a virtual roll call for a formal nomination before the party’s national convention, which begins on 19 August. Kamala Harris is emerging as the favourite to replace Biden if he were to withdraw, although governors Gavin Newsom of California and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan remain viable alternatives.
A messy, divisive convention – where protests over the war in Gaza are already expected – would only reinforce the suspicion that, with American democracy hanging by a thread, the Democratic party is failing to meet the moment.
Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “American democracy and the force of the conservative movement that we’re seeing in the supreme court lacks a coherent, energetic counterpoint. The Democratic party is simply not up for the fight. The conservatives are marching ahead and the Democrats are flailing.”
Jacobs added: “It’s reasonable to ask, why did it come to this with regards to Biden? Why weren’t party leaders intervening a year and a half ago to usher off Biden to bring in genuine competition? Instead, they leave it for a debate, which realistic leaders could anticipate how it was going to turn out.
“The fact that Trump was lying and bullying was known going in and Biden seemed so incapable of responding and so surprised by it. It was a very powerful signal of his infirmity but also of the infirmity [of the] party in moving past him. Joe Biden almost certainly can’t win and the party seems incapable of processing that and taking action.”
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