It is no longer an isolated cry, it is an ancient chorus. In the media for several weeks, there have been countless political commentators calling on Joe Biden to make way for a more dashing candidate. “In the interest of democracy, Biden must step down”, headlines the magazine Tea Progressive. “The Democrats should now choose a new presidential contender,” proclaims the monthly The Atlantic. “The question is not: Should Biden give up? It’s more: How (to do it)?” says Ross Douthat, the right-wing columnist of the New York Times.
But, at 81, the president seems to have no desire to retire. Does he see himself as a messianic figure? In any case, he repeats that he is “the only one to have ever defeated” Donald Trump. And he is convinced that he will “defeat him again”. Public opinion is more reserved. According to a poll, 73% of Americans find him too old for a second term (56% of Democrats think the same thing).
Biden’s State of the Union speech on Thursday evening thus took on the appearance of an existential test. Tens of millions of Americans watched the president on their TV screens for signs of senility. They were able to see a Biden who was energetic, offensive, funny and perfectly capable of reading a muscular speech from the teleprompter. Will this reassure them? Even. In recent months, the octogenarian president has become older and has made more and more slips of the tongue. For example, he mentioned a conversation with Emmanuel Macron by calling him Mitterrand… “That could be proof that he knows how to communicate with the dead, joked comedian Stephen Colbert. He’s so old that he’s on horseback between this world and the hereafter.” Concern about his mental state was aggravated in early February by the damning report from Robert Hur, charged with investigating by the Department of Justice into classified documents found at Joe Biden’s home. He described the president as “an elderly, well-meaning man with a poor memory” whose “faculties have diminished with age.”
Hence the multiplication of scenarios on its possible withdrawal. It is too late for a new candidate to enter the primaries. Joe Biden has already won almost the majority of delegates. The president could, however, decide to step down before the party convention in August in Chicago, where his successor would be designated. “I still have hope that he does,” says Kenneth Janda, a political scientist at Northwestern University. “Lyndon Johnson did give up at the end of March.” To everyone’s surprise, in 1968, Kennedy’s very unpopular successor had given up on running. What followed was a chaotic convention with factional battles against a backdrop of the Vietnam War and violent protests. The party leaders responsible for selecting the candidate ended up appointing Hubert Humphrey, Johnson’s vice-president, who was defeated by Republican Richard Nixon. In the process, the party established a more democratic nomination process.
This scenario is not without risks. Vice President Kamala Harris would be the logical replacement in this case. But she is unpopular. Hence another hypothesis, even more far-fetched. Osama Siblani, the influential boss of The Arab American News, a Michigan newspaper, is convinced that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will retire together: “The delegates will therefore be able to nominate a new candidate, who will decide his running mate.” Kamala Harris still needs to kindly agree to give up her place to Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, or to Gavin Newsom, the governor of California… There is also the danger of alienating African-American voters, a big pillar Democrat, not very happy that the first black vice-president was being snubbed. Above all, this would mean that less than three months before the election, the party would find itself with a candidate almost unknown to the general public and without democratic legitimacy. In short, “despite all his faults,” summarizes Michael Cohen of the Center for Strategic Studies at Tufts University, “Biden is the least risky choice of the Democrats.”
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