Like minds think alike, so it was no surprise that multiple commentators seized on the same idea I had watching President Biden’s highly anticipated by some, dreaded by others press conference to round off the NATO 75th anniversary festivities: Rorschach test.
The news media coverage and social media discourse surrounding the re-election campaign of President Biden since the debate indulged in a mass psychometric examination of the President’s speech patterns, mental acuity, physical presence, and so on. A long list of things to be dissected, analyzed, opined upon, so on and so forth. A nearly hour-long inkblot to see what the assembled press could, maybe wanted to, see.
Anyway, as the President repeatedly redirected in answering, the full uncut presser for reference:
Folks who went into the press conference looking for an aged, stilted, struggling Joe Biden got plenty of that. Viewers looking for President Biden to go long on time and deep into minute details on certain answers got that. The press that wanted more than just a few questions asked got that, including – according to the President himself – a few bonus ones. The Team Trump folks who wanted some soundbites and viral moments for campaign ads, memes, and fundraisers got that. Biden 2024 staffers who needed some forceful audio and video of the President for their own campaign ads, memes, and fundraising got that.
The folks who want Biden to step aside from the race did not get what they want, or anything close to it. The folks who wanted ol’ Joe to completely fall apart on camera did not get what they wanted either. The Team Biden folks who wanted all the questions about the President’s fitness to go away did not get what they wanted.
If you gazed intently into the Rorschach test of President Biden’s press conference, you probably saw whatever you already thought was going on. Which means coming out of the press conference the status quo is probably going to maintain for a while longer.
The Biden folks have clearly been trying to “run out the clock” on the news media feeding frenzy that has enveloped the coverage of the President since the debate debacle. A news media that got caught and embarrassed by their coverage of the President trying to overcorrect by focusing on nothing but the President has to end at some point. Team Biden knows that with the Republican National Convention and the pending announcement of Trump’s running mate waiting in the wings, at some point Donald Trump will once again dominate the headlines.
Or so the conventional wisdom goes. For his part, Trump has been uncharacteristically disciplined – at least by his standards – in staying out of the way as Biden takes his lumps. The Showcase Showdown of nominating conventions and the new hotness of whoever is replacing Mike Pence on the Republican Ticket is bound to grab headlines and keep the talking heads busy. Trump managed to make the first debate all about Biden, and the GOP will try to do the same with the RNC, under the idea the best defense of all things Trumpian is a good offense against the incumbent president.
Which is a sound strategy. Normally. If Trump can stay on message. If the GOP can hold together on message. If the Republican Party doesn’t have too much stray voltage from its various and sundry controversial figures who might not understand giving Biden the spotlight they themselves constantly crave is good for the cause. If the economy doesn’t take a dramatic upswing. If some outside news event changes or overrides everything else.
That’s a lot of ifs. More than one “Ifs” means it isn’t a plan, it is a prayer, Chief Connelly always told us.
Anyway…
This is where President Biden finds himself and his re-election effort, regardless of how those for and against him see the post-debate discussion on his fitness. Like a sports team needing another team to lose to get into the playoffs, his own fate is no longer solely in President Biden’s hands. He needs some help in the form of Trump doing self-destructive things to make what would be – as our friend Luis laid out – an historic electoral comeback win. The polls aren’t really moving enough to change the dynamic of the race, even as the race gets louder in the news media. Biden is lagging, Trump has his ceiling, and right now the former is behind the latter as it has been for months now. Status Quo, even after relentless news media coverage.
When the hyped up “big moment” like President Biden’s press conference ends in a choose your own adventure level of more of the same, it tells us all we need to know. Less of a “big moment” than a navigational buoy letting us know we are smack dab in the navigational channel this election has been sailing down all along.
But at least we will always have the generated memes.
We’re in a situation where Biden needs to hit a home run.
Instead, he gets a single. Maybe a double.
And the argument becomes “HE GOT ON BASE!” versus “he needed to hit a homer”.Report
“The inning isn’t over, so we’re still in the game.”Report
I thought it was a pretty good presser, at least a double, probably a triple.Report
I agree that he got on base.Report
I think we have entered the Battle of the Somme territory (metaphorically speaking for now) of whether Biden Should Stay or Biden Should Go:
1. The polls aren’t moving per se yet but it is only July and the polls are frankly all over the map. For every poll that allegedly shows something crazy like blue states becoming purple states.* There are others that show things are just static or even some pro-Biden movement.
2. A lot of the people who saying Biden should go are often people who never liked him much in the first place;
3. There is an underexplored dynamic of this being Democratic Party elites vs. Everyday Democrats. For all the reports about fundraising catering and big donors putting their donations on hold, Biden hauled over 264 million or something in June and small donors seem to be donating in strong numbers still. I suspect it works a bit to Biden’s advantage to staying if big money donors are being petulant.
4. The political reporting on this has resembled a mean kid clique in the middle-school cafeteria more than anything else and you can see it easily.
5. As Rick Perlstein observed yesterday, the Biden deathwatch: “reveals yet another American civic institition in its glaring failure to stand up to the stress test of imminent fascism. Alas, it……falls into agenda-setting elite political journalists’ narcissicism sweet spot: it makes themselves the center of the universe, while denying they have any political agency at all……oh, and, bottom line, they’re all so jacked up over the prospect of a ten-way contest of Boar on the Floor. (The Peter Bakers are, yes, the Logan Roy in this scenario.)”
6. Biden has announced he is staying and despite hearsay and inneundo in the press. No one has come up with a way to get him to stand down.
7. The hair on fire crowd though has made up their mind and doesn’t know how to calm down or not have their hair on fire.Report
Re: #4, I kinda see the situation as being one where Biden is being covered by an adversarial press.Report
PEOPLE WHO JUST SPENT TWO WEEKS SETTING JOE BIDEN ON FIRE: Looks like setting him on fire was an error. However, he probably can’t survive the fact he’s on fire-Will Stancil
https://bsky.app/profile/whstancil.bsky.social/post/3kx2gjaalmp2yReport
If you thought the endless rehashing of the 2016 Democratic primaries was fun, just wait for the bitter recriminations if Trump wins, no matter who ends up on the ballot. It’s going to be bad.Report
“We would have won if more people supported Biden!”Report
Same as it ever was, just things will be somewhat reversed this go around. You have prominent progressives like Sanders and AOC indicating staunch support for the party’s presumptive nominee, and party loyalists and centrists like Pelosi and Mark Warner casting doubt.Report
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2024/07/11/biden-press-conference-capable-democratic-nominee/74361914007/Report
It’s amazing how places like People and USA Today are getting it right while the elite places are not.Report
Biden has gotten his audience to start booing journalists.
Report
He’s not wrongReport
One of the few things that Trump did that I agreed with wholeheartedly was “hold the press in contempt”.
I’m delighted to see that attitude spread out.Report
The rank and file of the Democratic Party want Biden for President. What do you have against the common people, Jaybird? Do you stand with the people who brunch?
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/930e4eac9a18371ae7da95c3de9f30cddb0f9f2e27f44ffb9a89b9d6c08dbcf9.pngReport
A recent WaPo/ABC News poll asked:
Given his performance in the debate, which of these do you think Biden should do?
“Continue his campaign for president” got 30%.
“Step aside and let someone else run” got 67%.
I’m down with saying that the 30% are the common people.
I’m just also noting how very many people seem to enjoy eggs benedict and mimosas.Report
How many people answering this poll are Republicans answering in bad faith? Also Ispos had a poll with the exact opposite resultReport
Let’s ignore polls that have results that we don’t like.
Then everything will be okay and it won’t be like 2016 at all.Report
Polls show a majority of both parties saying that he’s too old. It’s hard to fake that.Report
It’s about damn time. Republicans have bought themselves tons of deference for all manner of deeds of various degrees of defensibility for decades by attacking the nattering nabobs of negativity in the press. No reason Democrats can’t do it too.Report
Los Angeles Times calls for Trump to step aside as a threat to civil society and democracy.
https://x.com/MikeSington/status/1811899224906432656?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1811899224906432656%7Ctwgr%5Ea95b26ed035022d454c037d51b2b3937ffe79b83%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dlawyersgunsmoneyblog-comt_i%3D14293920https3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F3Fp3D142939t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F20242F072Fthe-greatest-act-of-incivility-in-american-politics-is-accurately-describing-a-reactionary-justices-public-statements-and-legal-opinions-contdt_e%3DThe20greatest20act20of20incivility20in20American20politics20is20accurately20describing20a20reactionary20justiceE28099s20public20statements20and20legal20opinions2C20contE28099dt_d%3DThe20greatest20act20of20incivility20in20American20politics20is20accurately20describing20a20reactionary20justice27s20public20statements20and20legal20opinions2C20cont27d20-20Lawyers2C20Guns202620Moneyt_t%3DThe20greatest20act20of20incivility20in20American20politics20is20accurately20describing20a20reactionary20justiceE28099s20public20statements20and20legal20opinions2C20contE28099ds_o%3Ddescversion%3D6c27b7b2e58aef7c0a19eb6da9bdf7b0Report
I don’t think Biden is actually losing his marbles. He seems to be having more trouble find the right word and controlling his stutter, but that’s him getting worse at something he was always weak at, not a new loss of capability. My guess is that with age he’s having a harder time managing his speaking difficulties. That isn’t really a problem for him being President, the real issue is that tic might make it harder for him to campaign.
So, should Biden step down? Honestly, I don’t know. The tricky part here is the people that matter here are very different to the sorts of people who frequent this site. Some people here will vote for the Democratic nominee no matter what, while others won’t no matter what. And of course my opinion is worth less than the rest of you since I’m not even a US citizen.
The relevant people here are the marginal voters. People who would vote for Biden but not Harris or vice versa. Those tend not to be people who hang out on politics blogs for fun. One the one hand, its going to be hard for Biden to run an aggressive campaign with his difficulty speaking. On the other hand, he has a much stronger track record attracting the support of ordinary voters than Harris does and it hasn’t escaped my notice that most (though not all) of the people calling for Biden to drop out were opposed to his nomination last time – Biden has never been liked by the chattering classes, and and I think we need to weight their reaction to Biden with that in mind. I hope luminaries of the Democratic Party are running those numbers in the background.
What I do think you guys need to do, desperately, is stop nominating septuagenarians to the Presidency. There are major risks with nominating people that old. I assure you that there are plenty of people in the US who could do the job who were born after the Berlin Airlift.Report
It’s easier to commit to fixing a problem when it becomes a crisis. I think we’re going to do better on this in the next couple of years. It probably won’t be a systemic fix, and there will be some old-timers holding on, but I bet we’ll see a declining average age among major office holders.Report
Bernie’s for Biden: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/13/opinion/joe-biden-president.htmlReport
I’ll tell you what I can’t get past. Putin and Zelenskyy, they’re just names to us. If I switched the names it wouldn’t be my finest hour, but not my worst. Biden was introducing one of them, the one he’s steered the world policy in support of against the other. He’s supposed to know these people. It’s like the difference between calling one of your kids by the wrong name and calling one of your kids by your neighbor’s kid’s name. He’s been supposedly working side-by-side with Harris. if he’s lucid and she’s integral, this shouldn’t be a problem. Now, admittedly, I have a co-worker who I never call by his last name, and I’ve had to pause for a second to remember it, but I wouldn’t have called him by my competitor’s name. If these are words that mean something to Biden, he shouldn’t be confusing them. If they’re things he half-remembers and needs to review fresh before each event, that would explain his slip-ups. But he’s running for the job based on his familiarity with these people.Report
You need to get out more, and listen more.Report
Well, I guess we finally found something to take everyone’s mind off of “OMG Biden is, like, really old!”Report