Biden Self-Belief Collides With Democrat Angst in 2024 Struggle
(Bloomberg) -- Joe Biden’s fight to remain the Democratic nominee is driven by a self-assuredness molded by his five decades in Washington, a time in which he was repeatedly counted out in his quest to reach the White House.
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To many Americans, Biden’s insistence on running again at 81 years old defies logic. A furious effort to prove that he has the stamina to serve another term has done little to reverse perceptions that he’s too old. Surely, his skeptics say, Democrats would be better served with a younger, more energetic leader at the top of the ticket.
But the anxieties of Democratic lawmakers, donors and activists following Biden’s calamitous debate performance have only appeared to harden his conviction that he’s the best candidate to beat Donald Trump.
“I’m the most qualified person to run for president. I beat him once, and I will beat him again,” Biden said at a press conference Thursday.
Biden has never been one to be swayed by outsiders. He has kept a small circle of advisers that has mostly stayed the same for decades. Momentous decisions have been made during family discussions, with his wife, Jill, playing a major role. His only living son, Hunter, who has struggled with addiction and was convicted on federal gun charges, has recently joined White House meetings, according to NBC News.
There are few indications that those closest to Biden have pushed him to reconsider running. That’s a difficult conversation to have, one that would amount to asking a man who strove for the presidency across several election seasons to surrender the office and go into an age-forced retirement.
Democrats advocating for a new nominee have said aging only moves in one direction and the type of faltering performance Biden put on at the debate will only become more common in a second term that would end when he is 86. Yet the president has brushed that notion aside.
When challenged to drop out by California Representative Mike Levin on Friday during a private call, Biden acknowledged that age is a “legitimate concern for people,” but he said he could assure people by appearing more in public.
“I got to get out and show people everything, from how well I move to how much I know, and that I’m still in good charge,” Biden said, according to people familiar with the exchange.
Doubts about Biden’s ability to beat Trump continue to spread through the Democratic Party. But with events like the one he staged on Friday in Detroit — that featured a raucous crowd chanting “don’t you quit” — it became even harder to envision the possibility of Biden withdrawing.
Family Fortress
Biden’s wife and son have rallied around him with shows of support that signal they have no misgivings about his candidacy. The president is “all in,” Jill Biden said on Monday at a campaign event. “Just as he has always supported my career, I’m all in, too.”
Party mechanics are also helping Biden. There’s little path for Democrats to push him out, given that he won enough delegates in the party’s presidential primaries to become the nominee.
The only choices for Biden critics are bringing public pressure to bear and withholding campaign donations. That scenario, however, runs headlong into his stubbornness and belief that he remains the best standard-bearer. His roots in the Senate, an institution where primaries are rare and candidates regularly serve into their 80s or beyond, are also looming large.
Continued hand-wringing by top Democrats about whether to keep their reservations to themselves or go public is also buying Biden time. Luminaries like Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama could be persuasive to Biden but thus far they have not definitively said what they think the president should do.
Biden aides, speaking on condition of anonymity on Friday, reiterated that the campaign is staying the course.
Biden may also be unswayed because he thinks it’s a closer race than many public polls show.
“All the pollsters I talk to tell me it’s a toss-up,” Biden said in an ABC News interview. “Look, I remember them telling me the same thing in 2020: I can’t win.”
At this point in 2020, Biden held regular leads in polling over Trump. The president now trails his predecessor by 3 percentage points, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.
Biden’s decision to dig in is a test of his clout in a party in which he’s long bristled at his stature. Democrats who have demanded he withdraw fear that his unpopularity will not only cost them the White House, but also drag down House and Senate candidates and hand Trump unified control of Washington, making their worst nightmare come true.
Sense of Disrespect
That same distaste of Trump is driving Biden to stay in. His path to this moment has been marked by perceived slights that have crystallized a view of himself as a perennially underestimated politician, including during his successful race against Trump four years ago.
Even now, Biden routinely boasts about being elected at 29 to the Senate in Delaware, at a time when it was Republican territory. He peppers speeches with advice he gave as vice president to Obama, even as he’s written about the former president’s decision to back Hillary Clinton, not him, as the party’s candidate in the 2016 election.
He has expressed frustration that he received little consideration early in the 2020 Democratic primaries, which he eventually won. He taunts reporters by saying the media didn’t think he could achieve bipartisan legislation. And he rails against doomsayers who predicted a “red wave” that didn’t materialize in 2022, when Democrats lost the House by a smaller-than-expected margin and expanded their majority in the Senate.
All that brings Biden to the current crisis, prone to viewing party unease as just another case of him being disrespected, underestimated or both, allies and former staff say.
The president’s own campaign acknowledges that they’re trailing Trump, but argues that the gap is within polls’ margins of error. They have also expressed confidence disaffected voters will ultimately rally to his side, and that he still has a path to victory through the Democrats’ so-called Blue Wall in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
--With assistance from Josh Wingrove.
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