President Biden held a critical news conference at NATO’s Washington summit on Thursday evening as the fate of his reelection campaign hangs in the balance.
The event came exactly two weeks after the disastrous debate performance in Atlanta that sent Democrats into a frenzy of panic and prompted a number of lawmakers to urge the president to stand aside. It’s a crisis that Biden has not yet weathered.
The news conference was an hourlong walk on a high wire.
Advisers hoped Biden would reassure his party with a performance showing him in command on the world stage. Another collapse would surely have spelt the end of his campaign.
In the end, the news conference didn’t hit either of those extremes.
Here were the biggest takeaways.
One gaffe could erase Biden’s stronger moments
The news conference in its entirety was roughly what everyone has come to expect of Biden on such occasions — at least prior to the June 27 debate debacle.
The president showed his experience but also his age; spoke with force at times and trailed off at others; and reminded people of his familiarity with global affairs but also just how long he has been in public life. He referenced, as he often does, meeting then-Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in the 1970s.
But the danger for Biden is that the overall event could get overshadowed by one embarrassing gaffe.
In his first response in the question-and-answer session, Biden said “Vice President Trump” when he clearly meant to say “Vice President Harris.”
The moment instantly went viral. And it was made worse for Biden because, at an earlier event Thursday, he had referred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin” before correcting himself.
He did not correct himself after saying “Vice President Trump.”
The misstep was instantly seized on by former President Trump’s social media account, with the former president sarcastically writing “Great job, Joe!”
Soon afterward, a post appeared on Biden’s official X account shooting back, “Yes, I know the difference [between Trump and Harris]. One’s a prosecutor and the other’s a felon.”
The danger for Biden is plainly that the mistake, in combination with the “Putin” moment, unravels the image of competency he was so eager to project.
Biden neither erased Democrats’ fears nor fell apart
The prognosis on Biden’s chances has varied day by day.
Early this week, it appeared that a belated fight-back from Team Biden had begun to stabilize his position.
The tide was then reversed by lukewarm comments in an MSNBC interview from former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.); Sen. Michael Bennet’s (D-Colo.) prediction on CNN that Biden would lose; and the intervention of Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), who became the first sitting Democratic senator to publicly call on Biden to step down.
There was nothing in the news conference that looked likely to either definitively rescue Biden or, conversely, seal his fate.
His next big event is an NBC News interview set for Monday.
How the party will move between now and then is anybody’s guess. There are rumors that more Democrats could come out against Biden now that the NATO summit is over.
Roughly at the same time as the news conference closed, CNN reported that Pelosi and former President Obama had been consulting with each other over what to do about Biden — amid what they reportedly see as his receding chances of winning reelection.
The president praised his vice president
If Biden were to be forced out of the 2024 race, there’s no doubt that Harris would be the favorite to replace him.
That left the president in the awkward position of having to field questions probing the idea that she would be a more formidable opponent for Trump.
Biden assiduously praised Harris. “From the very beginning, I made no bones about it: She is qualified to be president,” he said at one point.
The praise for Harris was politically sensible, given that Biden wants to keep her on his side, and her support has proven valuable for him over the past two weeks.
On the other hand, the vigor of his backing for her doesn’t exactly talk Democrats out of the idea that they might be better off with her as their standard-bearer.
Biden doesn’t sound like he is going anywhere
Biden has been resolute in insisting that he will not quit the race.
Of course, he doesn’t have much choice — other than to bow out suddenly and fully. He can’t be seen to be pondering his own weaknesses too much if he wants to cling on to viability.
Still, he stuck to his guns Thursday. “I’m just going to keep moving,” he said. He also contended that the election campaign had a long way to go, and he played on general distrust of polling.
That idea of grinding on is at least consistent with his self-image as the scrappy “Scranton Joe” — though some Democrats worry he might be walking the part off a cliff.
Biden did acknowledge that he should “pace” himself.
But asked if he would consider quitting the race if his team showed him “data” demonstrating that Harris would do better against Trump, Biden replied, “No, unless they came back and said, ‘There’s no way you can win.’”
“No polls say that,” he insisted.
Still, some significant figures in Democratic politics feel he is viewing the situation through rose-tinted glasses.
“If what he said at the end of his presser is true, it sounds like Biden’s team has not been very candid with him about what the data is showing: the age issue is a huge and potentially insurmountable concern and his odds of victory are very, very slim,” former Obama adviser David Axelrod wrote on social media.
An unpleasant surprise shows Biden’s challenges remain
Biden fared adequately in the press conference, but his challenges were underscored moments after it ended.
Rep. Jim Himes (Conn.) became the 15th House Democrat to publicly call for the president to quit the race.
Himes praised Biden’s lifetime of public service. But he added that Democrats needed the “strongest candidate possible” for an election that might “define the future of American democracy.”
“I no longer believe that is Joe Biden,” Himes added.
Soon afterward, Rep. Eric Sorensen (D-Ill.) made a similar call.
Himes and Sorensen’s voices alone won’t be decisive, of course. But their dissent was a reminder that Biden faces a real and present danger of party support leaking away, leaving his position untenable.