To defy one's age is to embrace it. Joe Biden has several options for responding to doubts about his physical and mental capacities. The first, anger, is the worst: it looks like an admission of impotence. He expressed his anger after the publication of Special Prosecutor Robert Hur's report on Thursday, February 8. At the same time as this document, which cleared the president of any wrongdoing for lack of sufficient evidence in the investigation into the classified documents he had kept, the judge made comments outside the legal scope about Biden's memory loss. Their mention in an official document highlighted a clear concern among American voters. According to the latest ABC-Ipsos poll, 86% of them believe that the Democrat is too old, at 81, to run for a second term.
Biden regularly responds to these insinuations with a joke. "I know I don't look like it, but I've been around a while," he said with a smile on February 12, during a speech to local elected officials. "I do remember that." The applause was hearty, but it didn't resolve the issue. The president's supporters try to praise his experience and his record. But his low approval rating on the economy, despite the creation of 14 million jobs since 2021, testifies to a persistent disconnection, as if the president's lack of vitality were preventing the country's vitality from being recognized. There remains one option: to suggest that it is better to be old, like Biden, than it is to be indicted 91 times, like Donald Trump. From this perspective, the presidential race is seen as an obstacle course, an elimination by default.
The only definitive answer to this widespread doubt would be not to run again. Instead, Biden has chosen to take a considerable risk − a potential victory for Trump − on behalf of his party, his country and the liberal nations that are allies of the United States. Not that his candidacy is doomed to fail − far from it. But it does create uncertainty regarding his health, in the name of a questionable idea: that no other Democrat would be more suitable for the job.
Generational leap
In this kind of speculation, you can find as many arguments for one way as for the other. But one thing is certain: it is wrong to say that there are no alternatives. They would emerge rapidly in the event of the voluntary or forced withdrawal of the current president. They include Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, a key state on the electoral map, his counterpart in Michigan Gretchen Whitmer, and the governor of California, Gavin Newsom. None of them are obvious frontrunners, but each has obvious strengths that would enable the Democrats to make a generational leap.
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