President Joe Biden’s role in the 2024 presidential campaign in the final weeks of the election has been moved even further out of the spotlight as recent campaign trail gaffes prompted a range of responses — from eyerolls to outright anger — from some Harris campaign aides.
Planning for a range of Biden events had been up in the air late last week as the campaign worked to reassess how best to use the incumbent, who now plans to make several solo stops this week, including an infrastructure speech in Baltimore and an address to union members in Philadelphia.
As he’s watched from the sidelines of the race that he was in a little more than three months ago, Biden has embarked on some soul-searching, those close to him say, reflecting on both the long arc of his career and its abrupt end – his decades as a beloved party operative and, more recently, persona non grata.
Biden, these people say, remains firm in his view that he would be able to defeat his predecessor in November if he remained at the top of the Democratic ticket.
Once defiant on his mental and physical fitness in the face of questions from reporters, concerns within his own party and a blistering critique by former special counsel Robert Hur, Biden has become much more circumspect on his abilities, multiple sources told source.
