Joe Biden’s wife, Jill Biden, stars on cover of Vogue days after his debate disaster

Joe Biden’s wife, US First Lady Jill Biden, has appeared on the cover of Vogue – and the timing could not be more awkward.

Joe Biden’s wife, US First Lady Jill Biden, has appeared on the cover of Vogue amid the swirling speculation that he could drop out of the presidential race.

The awkwardly timed photo shoot and accompanying feature story went to print before Mr Biden took to the stage for his first debate against Donald Trump last Thursday.

Mr Biden, 81, has long faced doubts about his age and mental acuity – and those concerns were supercharged by his widely panned performance against Mr Trump, during which he stumbled over his words and struggled to put forward a coherent case for his re-election.

By pure coincidence, albeit a fitting one, Dr Biden’s appearance on Vogue’s cover was accompanied by the quote: “We will decide our future.”

It was revealed a day after Mr Biden met with his family at the presidential retreat, Camp David, on Sunday to discuss “the future of his campaign”.

Dr Biden was photographed in suffragette white.

Jill Biden on Vogue's cover. Picture: Vogue

The online version of the article, which went live on Monday, features a lengthy “editor’s note” right at the top, addressing recent events.

“The debate on June 27 spurred a discussion about whether President Joe Biden should remain the Democratic nominee,” the note reads.

“Dr Jill Biden, the First Lady and Vogue’s August cover subject, has fiercely defended her husband and stood by him. Reached by phone on June 30 at Camp David, where the Biden family had gathered for the weekend, she told Vogue that they ‘will not let those 90 minutes define the four years he’s been president. We will continue to fight.’

“President Biden, she added, ‘will always do what’s best for the country.’ Whatever happens in the weeks and months between now and November, it is Dr Biden who will remain the President’s closest confidant and advocate.”

Joe and Jill Biden on June 29. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

The article itself explores the tricky balance Dr Biden has been forced to strike between her role as First Lady and her continuing job as a schoolteacher.

But it also unveils her crucial role as a political adviser.

“People don’t mention her when they talk about Biden’s key advisers, but she’s his gut check and his closest confidant,” New York Times White House correspondent Katie Rogers stresses to the author.

“She really believes in her husband’s ability to get things done for the American people, whether they’re his supporters or not. That’s why she’s fighting so hard for him to get a second term, because there are things they’ve got left on the agenda.

“And she’s told me she’ll travel twice as much, and fight twice as hard, because of the threats she sees, especially to women.”

Vogue alludes, multiple times, to the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs Wade, a historic decision from the 1970s that had underpinned abortion rights in the country.

In her own quotes to the magazine, Dr Biden also frames the upcoming election as a choice between Mr Biden’s stability and Mr Trump’s “vitriol”.

“Every campaign is important, and every campaign is hard,” she says.

“Each campaign is unique. But this one, the urgency is different. We know what’s at stake. Joe is asking the American people to come together to draw a line in the sand against all this vitriol.

“We don’t need more chaos. Fundamentally, Americans care about each other. And this anger and animosity and divisiveness, it’s not who we are. We’re good people.”

Joe and Jill Biden just after his debate against Mr Trump. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

Biden campaign scrambles

The Biden family’s weekend meeting, and the emergence of Dr Biden’s interview with Vogue, came as the President’s campaign scrambled to contain calls for him to step aside.

In the process, though, it may have revealed just how vulnerable he is.

In one telling fundraising email, the campaign highlighted polling between Mr Trump and a wide range of potential Democratic candidates: Vice President Kamala Harris, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker.

In the campaign’s chosen poll, none of those candidates exceeded Mr Biden’s vote share of 45 per cent, though none of them came in any lower than 43 per cent either.

Mr Trump’s performance was also fairly steady, ranging between 48 and 46 per cent in each match-up – all of which he won.

The polling cited by Mr Biden's campaign.

Polling guru Nate Silver, who has made his view that Mr Biden should quit the race more than clear, took issue with the campaign’s framing.

“Literally all of the Democrats in this poll are actually doing better than or equal to Biden despite being much less well-known, which generally tends to depress your polling,” Silver wrote on social media. “That this is the best talking point they can come up with indicates how poor their argument is.

“Democratic Senate candidates in swing states are doing overwhelmingly better than Biden, literally outpolling him in every single poll. Democrats don’t have a Democrat problem; they have a Biden problem. Voters are smart enough to recognise he’s too old.

“That the campaign is pointing toward polling showing him three points down in Michigan as a positive – an absolutely, un-negotiably must-win state for him – is all the evidence you need that he should quit.

“Biden might win because there’s inherent uncertainty in elections. It’s not a totally lost cause. But this is not the odds-on play, and they can’t even run a good bluff anymore.

“No Democrat is even trying to argue it’s a good idea to make the guy who literally struggled to formulate a complete sentence on Thursday night the president for another four years. It’s an untenable position. It might win, because Trump is also untenable. But it’s plainly untenable.”