US President Joe Biden speaks in Atlanta, USA, after his election debate with former Republican President Donald Trump, June 27, 2024 (AFP / Mandel NGAN)
Joe Biden, extremely weakened, returns to the campaign on Friday after a completely failed debate against Donald Trump which raises, even among his supporters, the question of maintaining his candidacy for a second term.
Just read the implacable editorial by Thomas Friedman, who describes himself as a “friend” of the American president, on Friday in the New York Times.
“Joe Biden, a good man, a good president, is not in a position to run for re-election,” writes the editorialist, who says he “cried” seeing the 81-year-old Democrat, at times haggard, stumble over the words and stammer for 90 minutes in front of CNN cameras.
Philanthropist Maria Shriver, niece of the assassinated president “JFK” and ally of Joe Biden, wrote on the social network
“He had one thing to do (during the debate), and that was to reassure America that he was capable of being president at his age. It’s a failure,” said a former Democratic senator, Claire McCaskill, on the MSNBC channel, which the main person often watches.
The campaign’s attempt to justify the slump as a “cold” and instead draw attention to the “lies” Donald Trump has been telling has fallen flat.
– “Panic” –
The American media are reporting a real “panic” among Democrats, four months before the election and about six weeks before the convention that is supposed to swear in the American president.
Which should be an opportunity to ask ourselves “who is best placed to prevent Trump from returning to power”, even judges a German official responsible for bilateral cooperation with the United States, Michael Link, interviewed by the daily Tagesspiegel.
For now, however, no Democratic Party heavyweight has publicly echoed this sentiment.
Officially, the line remains to support the octogenarian candidate, who will be campaigning at 12:30 local time (16:30 GMT) in North Carolina, a southeastern state that his team hopes to wrest from his 78-year-old Republican rival in November.
He then went to raise funds in New York and then in the Hamptons, a very chic resort area not far away.
Donald Trump will be in Chesapeake, in the eastern state of Virginia, on Friday.
The billionaire, so quick to mock “Sleepy Joe”, did not even need to insist after the debate on the poor performance of his opponent.
Above all, he published a video on his Truth Social network showing him making nice golf shots: the former real estate developer did not appreciate Joe Biden mocking his performances on the green during the debate.
– Convention –
Vice President Kamala Harris herself acknowledged that Joe Biden had made a “laborious” start but felt that he had finished “strongly” against an opponent who made a series of false or outrageous statements without ever losing his calm or his aplomb.
The 59-year-old Democrat, sent to the front Thursday evening to limit the damage, will campaign on Friday in Nevada (west).
His name is obviously on the list of those who could replace Joe Biden in the race for the White House, alongside in particular some prominent Democratic governors, such as Gavin Newsom in California or Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan.
If Joe Biden threw in the towel, the Democrats would meet in August in Chicago for what is called an “open” convention, during which the votes of delegates collected by the American president during the primary would be put into play.
A scenario not seen since 1968. The party then had to find a replacement for President Lyndon B. Johnson after the latter gave up running in the middle of the Vietnam War.
Incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey was nominated, but lost the election to Republican Richard Nixon.
