Joe Biden Doesn’t Seem to Realize How Much Trouble He’s In
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Heading into the weekend, Joe Biden’s political standing is not great. The Washington Post reported Friday that Democratic Sen. Mark Warner—not, historically, a a guy who rocks the boat within the party—is organizing a group of other senators to tell Biden that he needs to leave the race. Three House Democrats have already done so. On Thursday, Biden accidentally told a radio host that he was the first Black woman to hold the vice presidency. (Not true.)
The president, though, believes that he can can impress wavering voters and party figures with a show of mental fitness in high-visibility appearances, and to that end he sat Friday afternoon for an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, which the network aired a few hours later, uncut.
On the subject of the debate, Biden said that he had been sick in the days leading up to his event with Donald Trump: “I was exhausted. I didn’t listen to my instincts in terms of preparing and—and a bad night.” He insisted that he hasn’t declined physically or mentally, despite reporting that has suggested otherwise. He did deliver at least one answer that would have qualified as his best moment of the debate, had he given it then: “When I ran … I wanted to do three things,” he said, describing his first term. “Restore some decency to the office, restore some support for the middle class instead of trickle down economics both from the middle out and the bottom up the way the wealthy still do fine, everyone does better, and unite the country.”
In the big picture, though, it wasn’t much of an improvement. One of his first answers to Stephanopoulos was garbled in the same way as the debate moments that caused so much alarm:
The whole way I prepared, nobody’s fault, mine. Nobody’s fault but mine. I, uh—I prepared what I usually would do sitting down as I did come back with foreign leaders or National Security Council for explicit detail. And I realized—about partway through that, you know, all—I get quoted, the New York Times had me down, at ten points before the debate, nine now, or whatever the hell it is. The fact of the matter is, what I looked at is that he also lied 28 times. I couldn’t—I mean, the way the debate ran, not—my fault, no one else’s fault, no one else’s fault.
You can guess at what he’s getting at there—he prepared for a substantive conversation, not for what Trump would do—but it’s not entirely clear.
Biden also evaded Stephanopoulos’ attempt to pin him down on a promise to take a neurological exam from an independent doctor, arguing that he gets “a full neurological test every day” from his demanding job. And he veered into delusion when discussing current polling. “All the pollsters I talk to tell me it’s a toss-up. It’s a toss-up,” he said. (The RealClearPolitics polling average has him behind Trump by more than three points.)
Then his words got a bit askew again: “And when I’m behind—there’s only one poll I’m really far behind. CBS poll and NBC, I mean, excuse me, and—” After Stephanopoulos stepped in and mentioned the New York Times, Biden went on: “That’s exactly right. The New York Times had me behind before anything having to do with this race. [He seems to mean “debate,” not race.] Had me behind 10 points. Ten points they had me behind. Nothing’s changed substantially since the debate in the New York Times poll.” It’s not clear what Biden meant here; the New York Times/Siena College poll had him losing by three points before the debate and six after.
None of this was worse or as viral as what happened at the debate—but given that a large majority of voters are already convinced Biden is not fit for office, “not making things any worse” is not the bar he needs to clear. The status quo going in was a losing one, and that’s probably still true.
Biden did not, however, seem to realize any of this. He insisted that he is not just qualified but best qualified to defeat Donald Trump, returning more than once to the idea that only he could manage relations with NATO countries and other allies, holding China and Russia in check, in a way that bordered on narcissism. (He seemed incredulous that anyone would think that there were people who could serve more ably as president than him. “Who’s gonna be able to hold NATO together like me?” he said, and “I’m the guy that put NATO together, the future,” referring to the recent expansion of the alliance.)
Asked about Trump’s lead, he said that his opponent has never “been challenged in a way that he’s about to be challenged.” When Stephanopoulos pointed out that the campaign has already been going on for several months, Biden didn’t have much of a response. “Oh, sure, I had months,” he said, “but I was also doing a hell of a lot of other things, like wars around the world, like keeping NATO together.”
Toward the end of the interview, Stephanopoulos pressed Biden over the course of several minutes about what he would do if congressional and party leaders came to him and asked him to leave the race. “That’s not going to happen!” he said at one point emphatically, listing off the leaders with whom he has had long relationships, and who, he says, support him fully. Stephanopoulos asked him to engage, though, with the hypothetical. What if they did tell him it was time to go?
The president got a bit exasperated. “It’s like—” he stopped and sighed, looking up and to his left, as if it was frustrating but a little funny that no one else around him could see what was going on. “They’re not going to do that.” But they might.
