For most of the past year, Joe Biden has been calming panickers in the inner circles of the Democrat Party, persuading them that the campaign was under control, that things were moving his way, not least because of Donald Trump’s criminal law problems. The big reveal at the first presidential debate showed an emperor without clothes, incoherent in his own attack, seemingly almost incapable of taking the battle to the enemy. It accentuated any impulse to feel that he’s already a dud and would be worse if re-elected.
There can be excuses and explanations and calls upon God or other higher powers to witness that one candidate or another is evil incarnate. But observers must contemplate what has always seemed obvious: that, as things stand, Trump is the old man most likely to win the election in early November.
And, most likely, the person he beats will be Biden both because the president would rather lose the presidency than the Democrat nomination, and because he has a strong self-belief, contrary to the evidence, that he can win. Particularly if his colleagues stop undermining him.
Biden might have his good points, particularly by comparison with Trump. But he has not demonstrated any new zest for the campaign ahead, one able to take away the impression of a tired, sick, wooden old man looking confused and losing his place on the autocue. He has negative impressions to counteract, even before he is on equal terms against another old man given to ranting, repetition and bare faced lying. It’s not merely a matter of appearance of fitness, and match fitness, but also of spring in his step and enthusiasm for the task of governing the nation.
But the crisis of impression management goes well beyond this. Despite all of his legal problems and distractions, and all of his time in court, Trump has been setting both the narrative and the argument. He appears to have persuaded not only his supporters but a substantial number of Biden supporters that the past three and a half years have been ones of unalloyed economic woe. That these lean years under Biden should be compared with the boom times in the Trump Years, and the careful and restrained stewardship of public resources that he provided.
Now that is all tosh; indeed, most of the economic statistics would suggest that Biden has presided over economic growth, improved employment and fresh investment in the economy, by comparison with the stagnation of the Trump years. Trump, allegedly, is counting on voters forgetting the hard economic times of his presidency and hoping that voters will instead “remember” the images, impressions and misleading propaganda he is putting out. Polls are suggesting that his new narrative is winning out, which is to say that voters’ memories are shorter than one would think. They can be changed with the right types of advertising, spin, and outright lies.
That may be lamentable, of course, but Biden would not be the first politician confronting a mendacious rival manufacturing false facts and impressions. Nor is it by any means the first presidential campaign in which unimaginable sums of money are being spent on constructing alternative realities. Nor is it the first campaign in which a candidate has personalised and nationalised a sense of grievance, an emotional edge in which one side is, in effect, accused of taking something away from the other and of disrespecting them. Trump has made his own problems (such as his legal problems over sexual assaults, paying off porn stars with whom he had conducted affairs and diddling the books) seem like assaults on the integrity of every decent American. No “facts,” no “realities” and no “feelings” coming from the ordinary political town square can overcome the alleged Biden or Democrat affront, indignity or insult.
But it is one thing to remark, ruefully, that one side seems to have the better of the argument at the moment. You wouldn’t think that the Biden camp was also spending similar unimaginable sums of money in its own efforts to define the argument and the stakes. Biden and the Democrats also have all the benefits of incumbency. All, apparently, to very little effect. One side seems to be cutting through; the other appears to be foundering.
Biden can’t set the agenda or change the surly mood.
I doubt the capacity of Biden to change the dynamic of the election merely with a scare campaign. It’s partly a personality thing and partly the fact that even when in safe circumstances (such as before an autocue), he is no speechmaker, no rabble rouser, no crowd mobiliser.
Moreover, his capacity to mobilise audiences and have them feel impelled to vote is not merely a function of getting them to think about what is at stake. Many younger voters, for example, are very disenchanted with Joe Biden because of his absolute support for the state of Israel during its war on Palestinians in Gaza. This is not simply an issue that has galvanised Americans of Muslim extraction, but others who think it is now time to confront the manifest injustices practised by Israel since its inception. This is not a matter, as Joe Biden, Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong seem to think, of occasionally expressing support for a two-state solution, while otherwise totally favouring one side.
If Biden decides to stand down, he has two choices. He could simply resign as president or submit to a procedure (I hardly expect willingly) whereby he is found unfit to carry on. His vice president Kamala Harris would automatically then become president with full executive power. She could face the November ballot with all of the benefits of incumbency, including the capacity to appear as a completely new face, with a different outlook on things. One would not expect her to repudiate Biden, to whom she has been very loyal. But Biden would have no capacity to bind her on particular policies as a formal condition for stepping down.
Alternatively, Biden might favour another candidate, or party chieftains might, leaving the candidate to be chosen by the Democrat convention in Chicago in seven weeks. Then to a two-month campaign. There are Democrat leaders who have national standing, and who would have national support. But it would be fair to say that none have the stature or national and international profile of Harris.
Even some of those who might be instinctively opposed to Harris, from the left of her party, might think that the party needs all of the help, and as few of the handicaps, as it can get. For the Democrats retaining power, (and having a presidential candidate with the “shirttails” power to pull in congressional candidates behind), is almost as important as the actual personality of the main candidate. If the senior party members believe that Biden cannot get the vote, they will have to tell him loudly and bluntly. The old bugger is a bit hard of hearing.
John Waterford AM, better known as Jack Waterford, is an Australian journalist and commentator.
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