The State of Joe Biden

At tonight’s State of the Union address what Joe Biden says won’t be heard. How he says it is the whole ballgame.

The week started for Biden in the worst possible way. A new New York Times/Siena College poll came out and all the numbers were bad. The most relevant one in this context is the 61% of people who voted for Biden in 2020 who now think he’s too old for the job. Again, that’s almost two-thirds of his own voters!

Isn’t Trump old too? Yes, but only 42% of voters think the 77-year old is too elderly to be president while 73% say the same about Biden. Is it fair? No. It also doesn’t matter if it’s fair. Voters see it the way they do and that won’t change.

So, every pause, every slip, every wrong word choice will be amplified. Unfairly? Yeah, to some extent. The guy has had a lifelong stutter that he has bravely and assiduously fought to control. He should be admired for that. But, setting that aside, he looks stiff and frail and there’s no question that he’s lost a step. He doesn’t present himself as up for the job today and voters can’t help but imagine what he’ll be like in four years and Democrats really don’t want them imagining a President Kamala Harris, whose approval numbers are even worse than his.

This is all downside risk for Biden. If he gets through it okay he’s still got eight months to go, eight months of opportunities to reinforce the notion that he’s not up to the task. If he messes up only a little here and there, it will add fuel to the fire.

All I want to do is beat Donald Trump. For most of his term I’ve thought that Biden was, marginally, the best bet to accomplish that. But three years of consistently bad and worsening polling numbers have flipped me to the view that the lesser risk is in finding somebody else.

I’m not proud of the fact that part of me actually wants Biden to fail tonight. I think that the Democratic Party establishment needs to get jolted awake to the idea that Biden is neither inevitable nor the party’s best foot forward.

Look, I like Joe Biden. I want him to do well. He has done well. But he’s not looking good, literally or politically. This can’t be about him. It has to be about keeping Donald Trump out of the White House. And, if that’s the goal, then Biden should end his speech with a stunner: he’ll step aside for the good of his country. (Note: I’m dreaming.)