Biden’s Own Supporters Have Told Us He Is Unfit for a Second Term

T his moment of peril for Joe Biden may well pass, and indeed may already be passing if he is determined to stay in the race.

This moment should be remembered, though — filed away for that time, perhaps not too far away, when we will probably be told once again that President Biden is exceeding expectations, that he is the candidate of norms, and that it is an unquestionable moral imperative to elect him to a second term.

What a large swath of left-of-center pundits have now acknowledged over the past 72 hours is that a continuation of the Biden presidency is a crisis waiting to happen, either via steady decline, a health event or fall, or — although no one discusses this publicly, for understandable reasons — his death.

If Biden doesn’t drop out and none of these pundits declare that they can’t in good conscience support him in November (which they won’t do), this is what they are signing up for.

From their perspective, it is understandable that they are willing to swallow whatever is necessary to elect Joe Biden to a risk-laden second term as long as it means stopping Donald Trump.

But this is the moment when, for all their self-righteousness, they have openly conceded that theirs is a compromised choice, that it comes with the potential of considerable harm to the country.

In his plea for Biden to step aside, Tom Friedman wrote of how a diminished Biden staying in the race would ill serve his family and staff, and everyone else: “They deserve better. America needs better. The world needs better.”

The Washington Post wrote, “His calamitous debate performance on Thursday raises legitimate questions about whether he’s up for another four years in the world’s toughest job.”

The New York Times editorialized, “He understood that he needed to address longstanding public concerns about his mental acuity and that he needed to do so as soon as possible. The truth Mr. Biden needs to confront now is that he failed his own test.”

These aren’t criticisms about Biden’s ability to project a robust public image; rather, they go to his basic ability to do the job and, as such, are shockingly fundamental. Some pundits did try to maintain a distinction between Biden as campaigner (sadly, not up for it) and Biden as president (still just fine). This reasoning doesn’t make a lot of sense, though, since personal vigor, communication abilities, and analytical acuity are important both to campaigning and governing.

The critiques of Biden call into question his ability to do the job right now, and really close the door on the question of whether he can do it for years more. If this is what nearly everyone acknowledges about Biden in June 2024, what is it going to be like in June 2025, or June 2026, or June 2027?

It is unprecedented for the journalistic supporters of a presumptive major-party nominee to have such nearly universal low regard for his ability to carry out the duties he’s asking the American public to entrust him with.

Again, it is Joe Biden’s allies who are implicitly admitting that he is not a normal candidate, that he is not a steady hand on the wheel, and that it is unlikely he’s going to compete a second term.

It’s good that reality has finally entered into their public assessment of Biden, but — with honorable exceptions — this isn’t left-of-center commentators confessing; it is left-of-center commentators getting caught. Many of them were happy to play along with the idea that Biden was as sharp as ever and dismiss or ignore evidence to the contrary until Thursday night made it impossible to do anymore.

Perhaps Joe Biden decides to drop out. If he doesn’t, all you need to know going forward about his suitability for a second term is what his friends have said about him in this moment.