If Joe stays in…

After Thursday’s fiasco in Atlanta, Joe Biden faces two hard choices. The hardest — and grimmest — is whether to stay in the race. Staying in means ignoring the rising chorus of calls to withdraw, not from the opposing party but from flaks on his own side, led by the New York Times. The only groups that haven’t issued that call, so far, are his party’s leadership on Capitol Hill and the two former Democratic presidents. They see the same problems everyone else does, but they probably think it is too late to force Joe out without catastrophic costs — and may be impossible because Joe simply won’t leave. 

Second, if Joe does stay in the race, his campaign strategy has to change. Until his ship hit the iceberg Thursday, his plan was to repeat what worked in 2020: 

1. Stay in the basement; 
2. Flood the airways with negative ads about Trump (and, as incumbent, say what great things Biden has done); and 
3. Let Trump’s hyperbole, personality, and refusal to acknowledge defeat in 2020 sink him this time 

Biden will certainly stick with the last two elements. It’s a great time to sell ads on TV, radio and computer screens. Both parties have plenty of money to spend on them. Biden’s ads will focus on what they think are Trump’s two greatest vulnerabilities: restrictions on abortions and threats to democracy. The ads will say that “Trump and his fellow Republicans will kill women with their abortion policy” and “Trump will kill democracy, as he tried to do on January 6.” Those are Joe’s best shots, both because they resonate with voters and because Trump hasn’t come up with good responses. 

One clunker, which Joe should abandon, is saying Trump’s proposed tax cuts are simply boondoggles for the rich. That’s a traditional Democratic attack, but it worked far better during Biden’s first campaign, against Herbert Hoover. It won’t work now for two reasons. First, middle-class voters remember their real incomes actually rose under Trump. Second, the Republicans are a vastly changed party. Trump has rebuilt the party around working-class populism and nationalism. That means Joe is attacking yesterday’s party. Today’s voters, including independents, think the Democrats and the uniparty inside the Beltway are the rich corporate types, Hollywood stars, and Ivy League plutocrats. They don’t see many Democrats driving eighteen-wheelers. 

Still, attacking the wrong target is not Joe’s biggest problem. Not even close. His biggest problem is overcoming the perception that he is too old, too infirm, mentally and physically, to handle the job. He must overturn that perception before it solidifies into conventional wisdom. 

He cannot do that by hiding in the basement. Why? Because, after the debate, the aged and infirm president must demonstrate, repeatedly, that he is cognitively capable of performing the hardest job on earth and is likely to remain capable for another four years. He has to convince skeptical voters that he simply had one bad night. He can only do that by getting in front of voters and showing them. 

Good luck with that. Most voters don’t believe Joe Biden can do that anymore. There’s a good reason the White House staff has kept Biden out of the public eye — with increasing protectiveness during the past year. There’s a good reason Biden won’t answer questions from the press. There’s a good reason he has to be surrounded by a gaggle of apparatchiks to walk to the helicopter. (The video of Barack Obama walking him off the stage in Los Angeles was devastating.) There’s a good reason the White House calls a lid on public events by lunchtime. There’s a good reason why the president needs note cards to say hello to a visiting dignitary. 

None of these problems will get better. They will all get worse. The public, including many who cheer what Biden has accomplished during his first three years, know it in their guts. They don’t need to hear it from the New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, or TV doctors. Every family has dealt with older friends and relatives in serious decline. They can see the same thing on Joe Biden’s face. Jon Stewart, no friend of Donald Trump, called it Biden’s “resting Twenty-Fifth Amendment” face. 

These perceptions mean that, if Biden stays in the race, he must get out on the campaign trail and perform well, as he did on Friday in Raleigh, North Carolina. Occasional rallies are not enough. He has to hold lots of them and perform well. 

Moreover, he can no longer count on the mainstream media’s spin machine, at least for a month or two. (Things will change after the convention; they will rally round their party’s nominee.) After the debate, though, his media allies were holding back tears. None even tried to pretend he won. Most didn’t go with the obvious back-up line: it was just one bad night. They could tell from watching Joe’s face for ninety minutes that it was far worse than that. 

The NYT and the columnists who march in lockstep with its editorial policy acknowledged the obvious: Joe Biden in decline, physically and cognitively. He may not be able to handle the job for four more months, much less four more years. If his condition is that bad, then electing him means handling the country over to a shadow cabinet of insiders, appointees, and bureaucrats. They will run the country, unelected and unsupervised. 

Biden can’t quell this chorus of doubts with TV ads. He will have to do more than read from the teleprompter and do it well. He will have to take questions from the press. He will sit down with the friendliest ones, of course, but he can’t do what he did in 2020 and toss vacuous platitudes back and forth with the “Morning Fun Guys” in East Bupkas, California. 

If Biden can’t handle the rallies and press interviews, then he can expect the dreaded call from HR. In this case, the call would come during a secret meeting with Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, reinforced by leaks from “people close to former president Barack Obama.” 

But HR can’t fire Biden. He gets to make that call himself. He has enough votes to clinch renomination, and he can add, quite accurately, that picking anyone to replace him will be an ugly mess.  

Actually, it’s an ugly mess whether he stays in or gets out. It’s sad — for Joe Biden, his family and his party. For anyone who believes high public office demands mental fitness, it’s worse than sad. It’s mourning in America.