Elections in the US: Neither Biden nor the Democratic Party are reconsidering the nomination | USA election

The Diplomatic Room, a charming room decorated in pastel tones on the ground floor of the White House, is usually used for formal pictures taken by the President with his guests at Christmas parties and various celebrations in office. Because of its smaller dimensions than the larger rooms on the main floor, on Thursday Joe Biden was chosen to appear before press…

The Diplomatic Room, a charming room decorated in pastel tones on the ground floor of the White House, is usually used for formal pictures taken by the President with his guests at Christmas parties and various celebrations in office. Because of its smaller dimensions than the larger rooms on the main floor, Thursday was chosen for Joe Biden to appear before the press after a devastating report by prosecutor Robert Hurr, which cleared him of the charge of having classified material, but cast doubt on your memory. The capacity idea was that, in more solitude, where the president performed better in front of a crowd, he would demonstrate superior mental abilities in front of the camera. The result backfired: several of his blunders during the session fueled controversy over whether he was fit to run for a second term.

The White House and its Democratic supporters have come out en masse to defend the president, who in that intervention confused Egypt with Mexico and stopped short while describing the rosary of his dead son, Beau Biden. “No one who works here could agree (with Hur’s report). “We all see a person who works very, very hard, who fully understands how Americans feel and how he stands on issues that are important to him,” his spokeswoman Carine Jean-Pierre said at her daily press conference on Friday. Responding in a way.”

The fear is that the image of Biden will be reinforced as the “old man with a bad memory” described in the prosecutor’s report, which they argue is a caricature far removed from what they experience on a daily basis. Dan Pfeiffer, a former political adviser in the White House during the Barack Obama and Biden vice-presidential eras, admits on his blog, “Biden’s age represents a major obstacle to his re-election and this narrative could be very damaging.”

Hurr’s report added fuel to a debate that has been quietly raging in some circles for some time: the president’s eligibility to run for re-election. Photos, videos and memes abound on social networks depicting their hard moves and mistakes. The poll gives him the lowest popularity rating for an American president in recent memory and puts him behind his closest Republican rival, Donald Trump, ahead of the November elections. A survey for The New York Times Last November it suggested that 70% of voters in swing states agreed that Biden was “too old to be an effective president.” Only half feel the same way about Republican nominee Donald Trump, who is four years her junior and has publicly confused names and events.

Achievements of his command

But the Democratic Party hierarchy remains steadfast in its support of Biden, a man for whom public speaking has always been difficult — he stuttered as a child — and who has been prone to small-talk gaffes throughout his career. policy. His supporters point to the mandate’s achievements, which have restarted the US economy and left unemployment at its lowest level in half a century, and normalized relations with allies after a Trump-era setback abroad. They remember that in 2019 and 2020 there was a similar debate about the age and popularity of the then former Vice President. That his first results in the primaries were disappointing. That he clearly ended up imposing himself in them and in the 2020 presidential elections. And that in every primary held so far this year, Biden has won by a landslide.

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The president has also shown no signs of considering resigning from the candidacy, convinced he is the ideal man to defeat Trump again in November. On Thursday, when a reporter asked him about voters’ concerns about his age, he angrily insisted that “that’s their opinion.”

In modern times, neither of the two major parties in the United States has tried to change their candidate. In 2016, then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton fainted while attending a ceremony commemorating the September 11, 2001 attacks, causing Donna Brazile, then acting chair of the Democratic National Committee, to consider the possibility. But Brazil quickly abandoned the idea, as he wrote in his memoirs. Something similar happened in the Republican camp that year, when a conversation was leaked in which Trump recommended grabbing women “by the chute,” but party chairman Reince Priebus declared there was “no method for that.”

Democratic convention

If he changes his mind, Biden could suggest a replacement at the Democratic convention, the party’s big meeting in August that will formalize the appointment of its delegates to the presidential election. The constitution rules stipulate that delegates who vote in that forum are “assigned” to, but not “committed to” a candidate, and must represent the views of their appointees “in good faith.”

The precedents for direct appointment to the convention are not many, nor are they recent. The last one was in 1968, when Lyndon Johnson resigned to seek re-election. After the assassination of Robert Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, the darling of Democratic voters, was named vice president at the party convention in Chicago – the city that will also host the convention this year – in a few days surrounded by chaos. Humphrey suffered a crushing defeat against Republican Richard Nixon.

One of the issues the party will face, if that situation arises, is who can replace Biden, who is running in a nearly uncontested primary. His vice president, Kamala Harris, never ended up taking off in the popularity polls. Other possibilities, such as California’s governors, Gavin Newsom, or Michigan’s, Gretchen Whitmer, very loyal to the president, are believed to prefer to reserve their options for the 2028 elections.

For now, Biden supporters plan to continue their staunch defense of the president. And, perhaps, the tenant of the White House appears to the public more as an editorial The New York Times: “The President has to instill trust and confidence in the public by doing things that he has so far been unwilling to do convincingly.” “He has to go out and campaign more, reaching out to voters outside the script. You can hold more question-and-answer sessions with voters in communities or on television. He should hold press conferences regularly,” he adds.

Meanwhile, his Republican rival, Trump, has chosen to remain silent on the age debate to focus on the main issue in Hurr’s report, Biden’s release of classified documents in his possession after he left the vice presidency. The former president, who faces 41 charges for voluntarily withholding more material, limited himself to suggesting that if prosecutors acquitted the current White House tenant, “they shouldn’t file charges against me either.”

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