'Knives Out': NYT Just Said What We All Know Is True About Joe Biden

Joe Biden absconds to the Middle East for a few days on Tuesday. It will be humiliating. The Saudis will nod and then laugh. It’s an administration that promised way too much and has not delivered on anything except making economic life miserable for working families. America is back, Biden declared. Is it? Virtually everyone thinks the nation is on the wrong track at 80-plus percent. They expected everything would be on auto-pilot because a Democrat won. That is not the case. Since the fall of Kabul, this administration has been a pinball machine of incompetence. Baby formula is not on the shelves of our grocery stores. In Biden’s America, prices are higher, paychecks are smaller due to inflation, and mothers can’t feed their kids. 

This trip to the Middle East is also without purpose now. Biden’s energy plan got a katana slice to the gut when French President Emanuel Macron delivered some bad news at the G-7 summit. The United Arab Emirates is at capacity concerning oil production, and Saudi Arabia can’t produce much more. Macron said this within earshot of the press. How does he know? He called them. Joe once again looked lost, aloof, and slow. The hallmark characteristic of Joe Biden aboard is how everyone can outmaneuver him on almost every issue. 

This is American leadership. A president that’s weak, stupid, and cannot do the job.

At home, Democrats are clamoring for the president to be more active on the core issues of the Democratic Party, namely gun confiscation and baby-killing. Biden has decided to strike a deal with Mitch McConnell in nominating a pro-life judge hoping to streamline other nominations down the road. That development is something Democrats didn’t want to see post-Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade. 

There is not a single area of this presidency where you can point to and say Joe is doing a good job. His approval ratings are in the 30s; Trump was more popular at this point. There have been endless reports of Joe being angry with staff who correct him at every turn. The president becomes hurt that no one takes his 2024 plans seriously. You all know the truth about that story. Biden’s staff must clean up his remarks because no one understands him. Also, he’ll be Methuselah’s age by the time he leaves office, should he secure a second term. Even now, the scheduling around this caretaker president is exhausting. You know he’s tumbling to the ground when he gets too tired. Such an incident will happen on the 2024 campaign trail now that COVID is over. Biden must do multiple events daily, three times as much in the closing weeks. No one, not even fellow Democrats, thinks he can do it. Even The New York Times is admitting that old age is the elephant in the room with Joe Biden (via NYT) [emphasis mine]:

When President Biden leaves Tuesday night for a four-day swing through the Middle East, he will presumably be more rested than he would have been had he followed the original plan.

The trip was initially tacked onto another journey last month to Europe, which would have made for an arduous 10-day overseas trek until it became clear to Mr. Biden’s team that such extended travel might be unnecessarily taxing for a 79-year-old president, or “crazy,” as one official put it.

Aides also cited political and diplomatic reasons to reorganize the extra stops as a separate trip weeks later. But the reality is that managing the schedule of the oldest president in American history presents distinct challenges. And as Mr. Biden insists he plans to run for a second term, his age has increasingly become an uncomfortable issue for him, his team and his party.

Just a year and a half into his first term, Mr. Biden is already more than a year older than Ronald Reagan was at the end of two terms. If he mounts another campaign in 2024, Mr. Biden would be asking the country to elect a leader who would be 86 at the end of his tenure, testing the outer boundaries of age and the presidency. Polls show many Americans consider Mr. Biden too old, and some Democratic strategists do not think he should run again.

It is, unsurprisingly, a sensitive topic in the West Wing. In interviews, some sanctioned by the White House and some not, more than a dozen current and former senior officials and advisers uniformly reported that Mr. Biden remained intellectually engaged, asking smart questions at meetings, grilling aides on points of dispute, calling them late at night, picking out that weak point on Page 14 of a memo and rewriting speeches like his abortion remarks on Friday right up until the last minute.

But they acknowledged Mr. Biden looks older than just a few years ago, a political liability that cannot be solved by traditional White House stratagems like staff shake-ups or new communications plans. His energy level, while impressive for a man of his age, is not what it was, and some aides quietly watch out for him. He often shuffles when he walks, and aides worry he will trip on a wire. He stumbles over words during public events, and they hold their breath to see if he makes it to the end without a gaffe.

Although White House officials insist they make no special accommodations the way Reagan’s team did, privately they try to guard Mr. Biden’s weekends in Delaware as much as possible. He is generally a five- or five-and-a-half-day-a-week president, although he is called at any hour regardless of the day as needed. He stays out of public view at night and has taken part in fewer than half as many news conferences or interviews as recent predecessors.

As Stephen Miller noted, it’s “knives out” with some in the press. Everyone knows the Democrats are in for a thrashing at the polls this midterm cycle. Should that happen, there might be a growing chorus from inside the Democratic Party urging Joe not to run and allow new blood to take the helm. Joe opting to roll out the rest of this term via a wheelchair has its issues. For starters, who can run and win against the GOP. It’s not going to be Kamala Harris. It will not be Warren, Booker, Buttigieg, or any other losers who ran in 2020. Bernie Sanders said he wouldn’t challenge Biden in 2024, but he could mount another bid if Joe doesn’t run. Still, if age is the issue, Sanders turns 82 in 2024. It exposes that the Democratic bench is paper-thin. No one has the national consistency necessary to mount a successful national campaign. Most of the younger candidates who ran in 2020, Booker and Warren, represent the glaring problem facing Democrats right now. They’re an intensely regional and coastal party. No one knows who Booker or Warren are outside of their respective states. The Democratic Party is also too left-wing to connect with average voters. Liberals are booting their own out of DA offices for being too soft on crime.

I can think of three people who can mount a serious run in 2024—all women. Hillary Clinton sees a weak 2024 field and might try again. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will turn 35 in 2024 and has resources at her disposal. She also has national name recognition and a following. The legions of the Left would be mobilized to the hilt with her in the running. The last is a woman who said she would never run for public office and has no interest—Michelle Obama. She doesn’t want it. I believe that, but Michelle could be an outside choice for Democrats should she change her mind. 

Let’s just hope Joe doesn’t fall down the stairs coming off Air Force One.