Forget November, can Joe Biden even see out June?

If you were a conspiracy theorist, looking for signs of a last-minute Democratic plot to replace Joe Biden before the election, you might think that some scheming staffer in the president’s scheduling team had set June as the month for a climactic test of his waning stamina.

For a man who rarely has more than a few engagements a day and regularly spends Fridays to Mondays at his beach house in Delaware, the next few weeks pose a set of physical and mental challenges that might undo a younger, fitter man, let alone the 81-year-old in the fourth year of a gruelling presidency.

But you don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to hear the whispers growing louder around the White House about the president’s health. Their substance is that, five months from election day and two months from when he is due to formally receive the Democratic Party’s nomination, Biden may yet be prevailed upon to stand aside and give a younger candidate a chance to defeat Donald Trump, who, despite or perhaps because of his latest legal travails – a felony conviction no less – continues to hold a steady lead over Biden in the polls.

The presidential schedule this month, and how Biden handles it, could well prove pivotal in helping his closest aides and family – and the man himself – to decide finally whether he should now go or whether he can somehow prove his fitness for four enervating campaign months and four twilight years beyond in the White House.

Joe Biden reaches out to touch a US soldier's tombstone as he and Jill Biden tour the Normandy American Cemetery. Picture: Getty Images.

June’s agenda is truly brutal. This week he flew to Europe for the 80th anniversary of D-Day commemorations. (It surely cannot have been lost on the other leaders present that, alone among them, Biden was actually alive when allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy.) While there, he was having crucial discussions about the progress of the war in Ukraine. And then it is off to Paris for a full state visit with President Macron.

After a brief trip home he returns to Europe next week for the G7 summit in Italy. Once back in Washington he hosts Binyamin Netanyahu for what may be the most difficult dialogue yet as he presses his ceasefire plan for the war in Gaza.

The month is full of personal stress too: throughout he will no doubt be watching with mounting agitation the trial of his son Hunter that began in Delaware on Monday, and which could result in the younger Biden getting an extended jail sentence for illegal possession of a firearm.

Hunter Biden and his wife Melissa leave court in Wilmington, Delaware. Picture: Getty Images via AFP.

Then, on June 27, he faces the most critical challenge of all – a live 90-minute televised debate against Trump, the first head-to-head battle of this campaign. The unusually early timing of the debate, at Biden’s behest (presidential debates don’t normally happen until shortly before polling day in November) has fuelled speculation about Democratic contingency plans for a possible late withdrawal from the election.

The encounter is early enough that should the president falter horrifically in any of the ways he has demonstrated over the past year – getting names and places mixed up, muttering gibberish, gazing vacantly into the camera during an agonising long pause or even falling over as he walks off the stage – it might convince despairing Democrats to make a demarche to the White House and beg him to stand aside.

There would then still be time enough for the party to replace him before the election campaign proper. With the Democratic convention scheduled for the week of August 19, the president could graciously announce his withdrawal in July, receive the tumultuous gratitude of convention delegates and celebrities, and bow out. The convention would then become what it has long ceased to be – a genuine contest as multiple younger, more robust candidates vie for the delegates’ votes, before one emerges to lead a united and invigorated party on the final frantic burst to November 5.

It’s all still unlikely. Biden himself continues to do his best to dispel suggestions of his debility. In an interview with Time magazine this week he insisted he could master another four years at the top.

“Could you really do this job as an 85-year-old man?” he was asked.

“I can do it better than anyone you know,” he said. “You’re looking at me, I can take you too.”

Joe Biden looks increasingly like a frail old man. Picture: AFP.

The spectacle of a fragile old man challenging a young reporter to a brawl might be construed as evidence not of the man’s physical prowess but of his mental derangement.

And still the whispers get louder. In a widely circulated report last week, Mark Halperin, a well-connected commentator who writes a daily newsletter from Washington on the latest political chatter, published an account, based on his Democratic sources, of how the president’s mental acuity has further diminished, even in the past few weeks. “What has changed is that there is now a greater chance that one way or the other Biden will not make it to November, physically and mentally.”

It was the most startling pre-obituary yet written. A deeply reported story in The Wall Street Journal this week added further fuel, with multiple examples from Biden’s confidants of his deteriorating cognitive condition: long pauses, eyes closed for so long he appeared to have zoned out, relying on prompt cards.

Perhaps Biden will yet prove the doubters wrong. He could emerge from his month of frenetic diplomacy with signature achievements and nary a single gaffe. Expectations for that big debate performance against Trump have been lowered so much that, as long as he doesn’t actually drop dead on stage he should surpass them by enough to be granted another lease on the presidential candidacy.

Perhaps. But this feels like the critical month in this endless campaign – a long hot June that may determine the outcome of American politics for years to come.

The Times