N. Peter Kramer’s Weekly Column
‘The only time he showed any combativeness was when he was challenged by Donald Trump to brag about his golf handicap’, an analyst said about Joe Biden in his debate with Trump. May be that incident says everything about the level of the debate, about the unworldliness of both men, about Trump’s vanity, but also about Biden’s. The incumbent president only reinforced the image that Trump has been putting up of him for months: he is too far gone to handle the ‘toughest job in the world’ until he is 86.
Last year, 77 percent of Americans said they thought Biden was too old for a second term. Some Democratic senators in battleground states are scoring better in the polls than he is and kept their distance from him in the midterms two years ago. His approval rating is stuck at an all-time low and in the primaries he ran into a lot of blank (‘uncommitted’) votes. Contrary to his promise, he will not step aside after one term and he and his party will remain deaf to the wish of the voters.
The Democratic establishment – the Clintons, Schumer, Obama, Pelosi, Sanders etcetera - has long suffered from a bizarre form of overestimation, see for instance Hillary Clinton’s ‘unexpected ‘ loss in 2016. The fact that the White House agreed to the rules of the CNN debate last week is another example of it. The format, a tightly timed yes and no in which the CNN hosts did not intervene was supposed to prevent Trump from interrupting Biden. An incomprehensible arrogance to think that Biden himself should be able to fact-check Trump live and the same time propagate a coherent vision.
All the alarm bells have been going off for some time, but the Democrats pretend not to hear it and stubbornly clinging to Joe Biden.
