I Interviewed Biden Last Year. His Debate Performance Shocked Me
But for Democrats, there is no clear path as to what they do next.
When I sat down in Iowa with candidate Joe Biden for an interview in December 2019, I expected his campaign for the White House to go nowhere.
Having covered his failed runs in 1988 and 2008, I had asked his advisers if they feared a 2020 race might end his political career in embarrassment. After rivals routed him in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, I envisioned precisely that result.
So, I approach questions about President Biden and the 2024 campaign with plenty of humility.
When I sat down with Biden again in the White House last September, he enjoyed my acknowledgment of massive cracks in my crystal ball. Over the next 20 minutes, he went on to competently, if not especially smoothly, field my questions about the threat to democracy that he considers paramount in his rematch with former President Donald Trump.
Yet Biden’s debate performance last week, just a few months later, shocked me.
His weak voice, faltering answers, and open-mouthed gaze represented the worst presidential debate showing of my lifetime. At times, he appeared sufficiently lost in his train of thought, as to vindicate those who call him cognitively unfit to serve.
I do not consider Biden cognitively unfit for the presidency. He has been doing the job effectively for more than three years.
He has won immensely consequential legislation – on partisan votes when necessary and bipartisan votes when possible. Few anticipated so much bipartisan achievement. Had Trump not blocked a major border security compromise for purely political reasons, Biden would have had another bipartisan win.
The president presides over the strongest economy among wealthy nations. The COVID-linked inflation that rocked every peer country has abated here, though some say Biden’s initial spending somewhat exacerbated it. Unemployment remains very low. The recession economic analysts predicted has not materialized. (Those analysts need humility, too.)
Crime rates have fallen. Biden has effectively marshaled democratic allies to support Ukraine against Russian aggression, surmounting fierce Republican resistance to win the most recent aid package.
The question is not whether he is diminished after a half-century on the national stage. Obviously, he is. Anyone can see it in his stiff, tentative gait and eroded articulation. The Biden I interviewed in 2019 communicated more crisply and effectively than the Biden I interviewed in 2023.
We have not seen credible reports from within the White House or from international counterparts that he can no longer process information, exercise judgment, and make decisions. He has done fewer interviews and held fewer press conferences than his predecessors. But the interviews he has done – with me and others – and his public interactions with White House reporters, have not shown a president disoriented or confused.
I cannot explain what I saw in the debate. None of the offered excuses – a cold, medication for a cold, fatigue, faulty preparation – suffice.
Biden had ample opportunity to make a clear case against the dangerous, dishonest demagogue opposing him, but he fumbled it.
Could the president have slipped dramatically between September and last Thursday? Does he have garbled days mixed in with lucid ones? Perhaps.
Biden has already outlived the typical American man born, as he was, in 1942. The risk of mental and physical decline rises year by year for anyone past 80. Whatever Biden’s capacities now, they’ll weaken over another four-year term.
Calls for him to step aside now cannot be dismissed as “bedwetting,” or factional conflict between Obama and Biden partisans, or the ambition of those eager to succeed him. The fear of a second Trump presidency, for good reason, runs deep. It runs deeper still after this week’s nakedly partisan Supreme Court ruling shielding Trump from some criminal charges.
Fear of what follows a Biden withdrawal cannot be dismissed either. Would Vice President Kamala Harris, his likeliest replacement, stand a better chance of defeating Trump? Would Governors Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, or Gavin Newsom of California? Would the replacement process energize or split the Democratic coalition heading into the fall?
All impossible to forecast with confidence. Many observers believe they know the wisest course. I’m not one of them.
The immediate reaction of prominent Democrats and snap surveys have limited value. It will take more time to assess whether Biden’s polling and public appearances assuage or exacerbate the anxiety enveloping his party. Fewer than seven weeks remain before the Democratic nominating convention.
Entering the debate, Biden trailed Trump slightly. He will soon probably trail by more. But structural divisions within America’s polarized electorate make it difficult to shift voter preferences one way or the other.
The Biden campaign’s theory has been that this fall, when voters fully appreciate the stakes of their election choice, the anti-Trump majority behind Democratic victories in 2018, 2020, and 2022 will reassert itself. That still could happen with Biden or someone else atop the Democratic ticket.
But a clearly-illuminated path does not exist. In this moment, those desperate to avert a Trump calamity navigate in the dark.
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Aiding and abetting a genocide can take a toll on a brain. Folk falling over themselves about a debate. Free Palestine and the US from AIPAC and Israel. How about that?!?
Mehdi, I’m going to take you and your team to task here. Every single day, we should be reading Zeteo reports on Project 2025. You and your team should be actively explaining what the Fascist Republican Party have planned for Americans. Every day, I should have at least one Zeteo email explaining these stakes.
This is why I signed up to be a paying subscriber the very first day. I believed you would be hard hitting in portraying those stakes. Please do not make me regret this investment. You have a much bigger platform than me. Please use it to help Americans understand what’s at stake. Do we want democracy, however imperfect but we will be free to improve it? Or do we want Christo-fascist White Christian male led theocracy? Those are the stakes, and I say that as an acknowledged expert on Project 2025.