In any fair discussion of whether President Joe Biden should remain a candidate for re-election, one point must be made immediately: Yes, of course, Donald Trump is even more manifestly unsuited to lead the nation. His repeated remarks about the undemocratic and authoritarian policies he will adopt if he returns to the White House should be terrifying. His depiction of the violent attempts by his ers on Jan. 6, 2021, to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s election as heroic is mortifying. He is the greatest internal menace that modern America has ever faced.
But Republicans are not going to turn on Trump. And the threat he poses is why Democrats must seriously consider turning on Biden and choosing a new nominee at the party’s national convention in August.
Yes, Biden was much better Thursday night at his news conference than in his faltering June 27 debate with Trump. But in one of his initial responses, he referred to “Vice President Trump” being “qualified” to replace him. And at the NATO summit about 90 minutes before that, Biden introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “President Putin.” It’s no wonder that Trump operatives can’t hide their glee over the fact that Biden was perceived in some quarters as having done well enough to stem the nascent Democratic revolt against him remaining the nominee. As Rep. Scott Peters, D-San Diego, said Thursday night in urging Biden to withdraw, “the stakes are high, and we are on a losing course.”
But Democrats who care about their nation must not just consider Biden’s decline through a political lens. A president whose own staff told Axios that he can be expected to be productive and engaged for only six hours a day is not one who can be counted on in an emergency like the 13-day Cuban missile crisis that President John F. Kennedy handled successfully in 1962. And if Biden is significantly diminished at 81, how would he be if he serves until he is 86, as he hopes? This concern must be a factor in Democrats’ decision.
