Convince the young people

Biden doesn't appear to be leaving the ticket so he needs to get on the task of regaining the trust he's lost.

I think the debate over Joe Biden’s candidacy is essentially over and I will wholeheartedly support him. The choice between him and Trump is not close. Trump is a dangerous man who is a threat to our country and democracy. He surrounds himself with morally and ethically challenged people who will use their power to advance their personal interests and corrupt agendas. He’s supported by a Republican Party and populist establishment that has decided that he’s above the law and immune to accountability. A second Trump term is a scary proposition.

That said, the fallout from the debate falls squarely on the shoulders of the Biden campaign. They negotiated an early debate, expecting to the change the narrative about the president’s age and offer a contrast to the Trump’s bluster, lies, and bravado. The move backfired.

A majority of Democrats didn’t want Biden to run for re-election and young voters, in particular, preferred a change at the top of the ticket. Implicit in his decision to run was the guarantee that he was up for the challenge of a long campaign, both mentally and physically, despite skepticism about his age and stamina. In response, the party cleared the field for him.

The campaign has never been able to quell questions about Biden’s physical and mental health. His strong State of the Union address, in which he sparred with Republicans in spontaneous exchanges, offered a reprieve, but doubts continued with the special counsel’s depiction of Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory” and Biden’s decision to forego the Super Bowl interview. Most recently, the Wall Street Journal did an expose titled, “Behind closed doors, Biden shows signs of slipping.”

The campaign pushed back hard against any stories that suggested he is too old to serve. The debate was supposed to prove that Biden could go toe-to-toe with Trump and put to bed rumors of aging problems. With the recent WSJ article and constant bashing by Trump and his surrogates, Biden had a very low bar. He didn’t clear it.

At best, Biden had an extended senior moment where he could not gather his thoughts and looked both bewildered and frail. Most of America saw a man who appeared to have cognitive and physical impairments. Maybe his health has deteriorated since he announced his re-election campaign in April 2023, but his performance confirmed suspicions that many voters already had about his mental acuity.

The press has done a shoddy job of covering Trump since the debate, but they believe they were duped by the Biden campaign who constantly refuted any stories about Biden’s age or health. They are not likely to let up between now and the election and Biden’s fitness for office will be a recurring theme. The Biden campaign needs to put to rest the doubts about his abilities if they want to stop the stories. Telling voters and the press that they didn’t see what they saw in the debate is not helpful.

So far, they’ve done little to satisfy skeptics. They’ve only allowed one unscripted interview since the debate. He’s not taking questions when he is in front of the public. They are not releasing any additional medical records or suggesting any other medical exams. That’s not very reassuring to the people he needs to persuade.

In particular, Biden needs to convince young people not to abandon him and the party. Democrats have built a coalition dependent on relatively high turnout among the people least likely to vote—people under 40 years old. They reluctantly voted for Biden in 2020 because they feared Trump’s second term. Many took Biden’s word when he said, “I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else. There’s an entire generation of leaders…They are the future of this country.” They believed he would serve one term, handing off the baton to those leaders in 2024. After the debate, they feel angry, betrayed, and misled.

This week, I reached out to nine friends with children between the ages of 18 and 35 and asked them what their children thought about the race and the debate. All of the parents were Democrats and most of their children were college graduates. Everyone said their children wanted Biden to drop out.

One said his 23-year-old son would vote for Biden but that he’s “embarrassed” to say that to his friends. Another, with three children between 24 and 30 years old responded, “Since the debate, they have been disheartened and disillusioned. They find it inconceivable that the Democratic Party would go forward with Joe Biden as its nominee given his obvious decline in mental acuity.” One woman with three children texted, “The debate was embarrassing and sad - Biden reminded them of their grandma who has cognitive decline and needs help walking…My kids will vote but they are talking about third party unless Dems replace Biden.” Two others said that their children were leaning third party or not voting at all.

These are the voters that Biden needs to convince to come back into the fold. They are part of a generation that has little faith in our leaders or politics. Their life experience is bookended by 9/11 and the pandemic. They’ve lived through the highest inflation in 40 years and the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression. We have had troops fighting in foreign countries most of their lives and we now have wars in Gaza and Ukraine that threaten our security. They don’t believe they will be able achieve the economic success or standard of living of their parents. They also don’t see the choice in this election, as so many of us do, as a choice between autocracy and democracy. They view it as a binary choice between a man too old to govern and one too corrupt to lead.

We should also use this episode to get over the idea that we need year-long presidential contests. That it’s too late to choose another candidate is absurd. John F. Kennedy didn’t secure the nomination until July 15, 1960 and we have far more communication and organizational tools than we did then. Public opinion now shifts in days, if not hours, when before it took weeks, if not months. This extended primary system didn’t begin until 1976. France and Britain have just had national elections in a fraction of the time we’ve had ours. Nobody, except consultants, benefits from these artificially long campaigns.

I don’t believe Biden is getting out of the race, so it’s time to put the conversation behind us and move forward. As the nominee, he’s created a difficult task for himself and he needs to get on it. He must convince young voters skeptical of his abilities to vote for him and not sit out the election. He needs to convince the press that the debate was just a bad night, not a regular occurrence. In short, he’s lost trust that he needs to restore. He has no room for error and the stakes are too high for the party to devolve into bitter infighting.