Shaky answers and several gaffes mean Biden’s press conference won’t stem the bleeding

Washington: Today was meant to be another history-making moment for Donald Trump.

The twice-impeached, four-times indicted, criminally convicted former president was meant to be in a New York courtroom receiving his sentence for falsifying business records in a bid to sway the 2016 election.

President Joe Biden speaks at a news conference on the final day of the NATO summit.Credit: AP

But after the conservative justices of the US Supreme Court threw him an immunity lifeline this month, Trump spent the afternoon filing a motion to dismiss his hush-money conviction entirely.

President Joe Biden, on the other hand, had an unprecedented moment of his own, conducting a high-stakes news conference to convince his doubters he still had the mental and physical ability to take on Trump – and win.

His performance, though it won’t be enough to stem the bleeding entirely, wasn’t the train wreck that many feared, given the horror of the first presidential debate last month.

Over the course of almost an hour – his longest press conference in months – Biden took reporters’ questions, gave a series of shaky answers and among several gaffes referred to Kamala Harris as “vice president Trump”.

But he also demonstrated a command of foreign policy that was once his trademark, used his age to assert his experience and gave no indication that he was considering dropping out of the 2024 election.

“I’ve gotta finish this job because there’s so much at stake,” the 81-year-old said when asked why he wasn’t passing the torch to a new generation.

Make no mistake – this was a do-or-die moment in Biden’s campaign. Two weeks after his devastating debate reshaped the contours of the race, Democrats continue to break with their leader, fearing they will not only lose the presidency if he doesn’t stand down, but also lose control of the Senate and won’t be able to regain the House.

A double blow occurred on Wednesday when former House speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to explicitly endorse the president as the party’s election candidate, followed soon after by lifelong Democrat and donor George Clooney calling on him to pull out of the election, weeks after hosting a star-studded fundraiser for the Biden campaign.

The fact that Biden agreed to conduct a solo news conference on the last day of the NATO summit says much about the pressure he is facing to stave off a mutiny within his own ranks.

At this point in his term, Biden has held fewer news conferences than any president since Ronald Reagan, preferring to stick to scripted remarks and highly media-managed events. According to data from the University of California, Barack Obama had 72; 32 were solo. Trump had 64; 16 were solo. Biden has had 37; 15 have been solo.

But Biden simply didn’t have a choice, with polls showing him falling further behind in key battleground states and, according to some reports, even his own campaign has begun to assess the strength of Harris in a head-to-head match against Trump.

Democrats now face an intractable problem. Top donors, supporters and politicians doubt Biden’s ability to continue, and even the president himself acknowledged that to do the world’s most demanding job, he needs to “pace” himself more.

Biden in one of the more animated moments of his hour-long press conference.Credit: AP

As such, many Democrats believe they are marching towards defeat with a candidate they have lost faith in, yet they don’t have a clear plan to do anything about it.

As Biden has pointed out, he received more than 14 million votes at the Democratic primaries earlier this year – 87 per cent of the votes cast in the entire nominating process. That gave him nearly 3000 delegates for next month’s Democratic National Convention, making him the presumptive nominee by a wide margin.

A party running on a theme of preserving democracy can’t exactly deny democracy for its own members, can it?

The only off-ramp would be for Biden to stand down of his own volition. If he withdrew from the race before the Democratic convention in mid-August, his delegates could then vote for a new nominee at the event, with Harris the obvious (and least messy) candidate.

If he withdraws from the race after the convention, a special meeting of the members of the Democratic National Committee would then have to decide on the new nominee.

But the committee includes about 500 party members from all US states and territories, which could make for a very complicated process.

These scenarios are hypothetical – for now, at least. Despite lingering doubts about his ability to halt Trump’s return to the White House, the often stubborn and occasionally delusional Joe Biden is digging in.

“I believe I’m the best qualified to govern,” he said tonight. “I believe I’m the best qualified to win.”

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