Going into Thursday night’s press conference, the best hope for Democrats was that President Biden’s performance offered a definitive enough answer on his mental fitness to bring the brewing civil war within the party to a conclusion one way or another.
A miraculously great night that staved off the rebellion among Democrats was one way to accomplish this, or on the other end of the spectrum, a complete face-plant by Biden that produced the groundswell needed to force him out of the race. The latter would allow Democrats to move on to the process of selecting a replacement as soon as possible.
Instead, Biden delivered a performance that offered something to both his critics and his defenders, ensuring that the debate over his disastrous debate performance, which has already hit two weeks, will drag on.
On the negative side of the measure, Biden was raspy and took a number of long pauses. He referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as Vice President Trump (on the heels of having mixed up Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin), claimed he was taking advice from the commander in chief, referred to a nonexistent broad federal rent-control program, and talked about how he had to do a better job of pacing himself. He mentioned how his staff had given him a list of reporters to call on and jabbed them for adding too many events to his schedule.
At the same time, he did field questions for an hour, in some cases giving long and detailed responses, which, even though riddled with errors (such as claiming Hamas had lost popularity in the West Bank), are something that his defenders can cite as evidence that he is still sharp enough to remain as the nominee.
As I said right after the debate, aging is not a linear process. Elderly people in a state of mental decline can have good moments, bad ones, or just okay ones. Democrats who fear sticking with Biden understand that it’s only a matter of time before Biden has another bad one — but as long as he produces okay ones, it will be hard to replace him as nominee.