Joe Biden’s demise shouldn’t thrill Donald Trump

The writing is on the wall for the US President, but Donald Trump should fear a younger, centrist replacement.

Donald Trump may have destroyed his best chance at regaining the keys to the White House.

Never in US history has the American ruling party sought to blast out its sitting president.

We’re living through extraordinary times, albeit ones brought about entirely by the Democratic Party’s refusal to admit Joe Biden’s obvious cognitive decline, and the President’s own selfishness at insisting on staying in the White House.

“Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else,” Biden said on the campaign trail in early 2020.

Well, it’s become a very long, rickety bridge and it’s about to collapse.

George Clooney’s brutal op-ed in the New York Times on Wednesday (Thursday AEST) was as damaging as any public criticism by any Democrat since his disastrous June 27 debate.

He’s not just an actor, but a major Democrat donor, and a long-term Biden ally who also revealed most of the party’s top brass privately believed they were looking at a thrashing unless Biden stood aside.

Joe Biden and Jill Biden with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. Picture: AFP

They are not wrong. Polls have turned south for Biden who is now clearly behind Donald Trump nationally; bookies are offering him 15 per cent chance of winning in November (down from 36 before the debate). States once thought to be solidly Democrat are being shifted to the “marginal column”.

Former Democrat House speaker Nancy Pelosi took a turn at dead comedy on Wednesday, urging Biden repeatedly to make a decision about his future, despite the President’s repeated insistence publicly and privately that he would be staying.

“It’s up to the President to decide if he is going to run,” the 84-year-old told MSNBC. She might be 84 but unlike the 81-year-old President she still knows what she’s doing, as politely as possible.

If Biden doesn’t announce his retirement in coming weeks, Trump will all but certainly win in November absent some remarkable own goal, an outcome that only two years ago almost no one would have predicted.

“There’s an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country,” Biden also said in those 2020 comments that he’ll come to regret.

To be sure, Vice-President Kamala Harris, who has publicly remained loyal to the President, is the most likely alternative given her position, race and readier access to the hundreds of millions in campaign funds already raised.

But drastic times call for drastic measures.

Democrat governors, such as Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer or California’s Gavin Newsom are not the only names being bandied around in Washington as possible alternatives to her. Republican Kentucky’s likeable Democrat governor Andy Beshear, 46, and Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, 51, would be better choices. The latter is a commonsense Democrat who abolished university degree requirements for most state government jobs on his first day in office.

Donald Trump revs up his base in Doral, Florida. Picture: AFP

This is a dangerous time for Trump, who may have excelled too much at the debate, destroying his best chance at regaining the keys to the White House.

After predicting on the golf course last week that Biden would quit, the 78-year-old has changed his tune – perhaps wishful thinking. Now, he’s riding high, revelling in the Democrats’ inter-necine debate.

Democrats worry four months is not long enough to promote a new candidate; is it really? France and the UK just had successful snap elections within weeks. And polls that compare Trump favourably with lesser known Democrats are meaningless before any alternative enjoys the full promotional power of the party and sympathetic mainstream media.

A few hours shy of a fortnight since Biden’s diem horribilis, he will face the world at his post NATO press conference. Only a truly magnificent performance could delay the inevitable.