A. Is a second term the norm? By all measures Biden has done a decent job as president. Is it the norm that such presidents are granted a second term? To examine this, I reviewed all past presidencies. There are sixteen examples of two-term presidents. However, there are also seventeen examples of presidents who were elected but served only one term. The reasons for this fall into three categories.
Rejected by the voters in the general election. There are nine in this catogory: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Van Buren, Cleveland, Benjamin Harriswon, Taft, Hoover, Bush Sr., and Trump.
Denied renomination by their party: Polk, Pierce, Buchanan, and Hayes.
Volntarily withdrew from consideraton for a second term: Teddy Roosevelt, Coolidge, Truman, and LBJ.
So, we can see that the second term for a president is far from being the norm. Hardly encouraging for Biden's re-election chances.
B. Is Biden a fit candidate? This question has to do with whether Biden can handle himself away from the teleprompter. His miserable debate performance suggests otherwise. It is up to Biden to disprove the narrative which has arisen folowing the debate.
I have looked at how many unsscripted news conferences he has held, compared to other presidents, and the results are not encouraging for Biden. Biden has held an average of only 11 news conferences a year, the third-lowest since the 1920s, after only Reagan (6) and Nixon (7). Even George W. Bush, who was similar to Biden in his propensity for verbal gaffes, held 26 news conferences a year, well more than double Biden's number.
In an attempt to re-establish himaself as a viable candidate, Biden held a much-ballyhooed 22-minute interview on July 5th, eight days after the debate, with ABC newsman George Stephanopoulos. Stephanopoulos asked no questions about policy, instead asking essentially the same question over and over for the whole interview, that being whether he is going to get out of the race. For the most part Biden dealt with these questions OK, but one answer really stands out as reeking of cognitive decline. George asked him whether he had watched the debate, and Biden answered, "I don't think I did." Huh? It's a yes-no question, either you watched it or you didn't. How can you answer that question so inarticulately?
C. What are the experts saying? The two most astute analysts in the Democratic camp are James Carville, who successfully managed Clinton's two races, and David Axelrod, who successfully managed Obama's two races. Both of them say emphatically that Biden needs to drop out.
Change is always hard, but the Democratic party needs to realize that it is time to pass the torch to a new generation. The Republican party is in the process of self-destructing, and the issue now is whether the Democratic party will follow the GOP into oblivion.
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American diplomat Richard Haass made an interesting point today on "Morning Joe" about why Biden should drop out of the race. Referring to Biden's excuse that challengers could have challenged him in the primaries, he pointed out that Biden discouraged potential challengers by insisting that the Democratic party must be united if it is to prevail against Trump and the united Republican party.
This excuse is just the latest in a whole string of Biden's excuses for his miserable debate performance. He had a cold, he had jet lag, he had too little sleep, Trump was shouting at him while he was trying to talk, and on and on and on, Enough already with the lame excuses!
Joe Biden and his supporters like to say the bad debate performance was "one bad night". But George Clooney refutes this: “I love Joe Biden. As a senator. As a vice president and as president. I consider him a friend, and I believe in him. But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time....It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”
Biden tested positive for Covid two days ago. All the pictures from the news networks from that day showed Biden boarding and getting off Air Force One, with everyone holding their breaths as to whether he was going to make it up and down the stairs. He looked totally frail and feeble.
At this point the only question is how long he will wait before giving up. Thirty-two Democratic members of Congress have now called for him to stand down, with the numbers growing by one a half-hour. The GOP just had a very successful convention, and Biden has no chance against the ticket of Trump and Vance.
To have a convention in which there is legitimate drama would, in my opinion, be a boon for Democrats. I think the party would unite behind whichever nominee emerges, and we would all be energized gong into the general election.
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