Photo: Anna Moneymaker Getty Images via Agence France-Presse For 24 hours, American President Joe Biden has been trying to convince his entourage and voters that he is still the man for the job.
Fabien Deglise
Published yesterday at 2:50 p.m. Updated yesterday at 11:57 p.m. Analysis
- United States
A meeting with Democratic state governors at the White House on Wednesday. A conference call with his campaign team in the presence of Vice President Kamala Harris on the same day.
Then, two political rallies in pivotal states, one in Pennsylvania on Saturday, the other in Wisconsin on Friday, as well as a television interview, initially scheduled for next Sunday, but whose broadcast was brought forward to Friday evening, at “a prime time”, due to “national interest”, the ABC network explained this week.
In the past 24 hours, US President Joe Biden has seeks to convince his entourage and voters that he is still the man for the job, a week after the disastrous debate against Donald Trump which raised questions in the Democratic ranks about his ability to hold out until the vote of November. And further.
Those around him now estimate that the next 48 hours, which begin the long weekend of the American national holiday, will also be crucial in silencing skeptics, calming anxieties and, above all, revealing polls which, after a debate which was supposed to breathe new life into the outgoing president's campaign, still announcing voting intentions largely favorable to Donald Trump. Otherwise, voices calling for an “alternative” risk spilling out of the current margins to multiply, thus placing the Democratic Party facing complicated paths.
The Voters now give the Republican a 6-point lead in their voting intentions, according to a Sienna College poll unveiled Wednesday, less than a week after Joe Biden's catastrophic debate.
Quoting two people close to the president who spoke with him in recent days, the New York Timesstressed this week that the president was aware of the gravity of the situation, acknowledging that his candidacy was at stake and that he had only a few days left to reassure his people. However, this was not enough time for Barack Obama's former advisor, Van Jones, who on Wednesday, on CNN where he works as a political analyst, indicated that behind the scenes, the Democrats had already taken a step further by no longer discussing “if” to replace Joe Biden, but rather “how” to do it.
“I understand [that in public] people are defending him, protecting him, to give him the space and dignity to allow him to make his own choice,” he said. But there is currently a big discussion about how [his replacement] will happen and not whether [this replacement] should happen. »
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Since June 30, around twenty elected Democrats or former important figures of the party have publicly called for the departure of Joe Biden or expressed concerns about the continuation of the presidential campaign, due to a weakened candidacy, according to them. , by the 81-year-old politician's poor performance in the race's first televised debate. He appeared tired, often confused and sometimes lost in his sentences.
In the last hours, the Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, Seth Moulton, added his voice at this concert, believing that the party should consider “all viable options”.
“When your strategy isn't working, doubling down is rarely a good move. President Biden is not going to get any younger,” the moderate Democrat said in a press release. “Defeating Trump is imperative for the future of our democracy, especially now that the Supreme Court has just written him a blank check to act like a king,” he added, referring to the Supreme Court decision of the United States which partly shielded Donald Trump from prosecution for his attempts to overturn the results of the elections and insurrection in 2020.
This week , one of the Democratic Party's very generous donors, Reed Hastings, co-founder of Netflix, called on Joe Biden to leave the race “to allow a strong Democratic leader to beat Trump to guarantee our security and prosperity,” he said. he indicates. The statement, reported by the New York Times, closely followed the appeal to the president by The Economist the day after the televised debate. According to the magazine's editorial team, Joe Biden should perform his “last and greatest public service” by withdrawing from the race in favor of “another Democratic candidate.”
“The obvious choice to replace Mr. Biden is his vice president, Kamala Harris,” continues The Economist, while emphasizing that she does not inspire confidence in voters.
It is ultimately Michelle Obama, the former first lady of the United States, who seems to best appeal to the crowds, according to a poll conducted at the beginning of the week by Ipsos on behalf of Reuters. She is “the alternative” with the greatest chance of leading the Democrats to victory against Donald Trump by garnering 50% of voting intentions. The Populist ? He gets 39%. The scenario, however, remains improbable: despite her constant popularity, Michelle Obama has repeatedly stated that she does not wish to run for the White House.
As a substitute for Joe Biden, Kamala Harris would lag behind the Republican by one point, according to this same survey. The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, would be ahead of Trump by 3 points and the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, another favorite in a possible race for the Democratic nomination, would be ahead of 5 points.< /p>
Over the past few days, Kamala Harris has indicated that she fully supports Joe Biden's bid for a second term and is not seeking to replace him. “We will not back down. We will follow the example of our president. We will fight and we will win,” she said during the conference call with Democratic campaign officials Wednesday evening.
A Democratic nomination contest four months before the election could send Democrats from post-debate panic to pre-convention turmoil—which will be held in August in Chicago—because of the legal implications that a candidate change could raise in several key states. In Wisconsin, for example, a candidate’s name can only be removed from the ballot if they die. In Nevada, the deadline to replace a candidate for the November election was… June 28. In Georgia, that change would have to be made no later than 60 days before Election Day.
“We are monitoring calls from everywhere for President Biden to step down, whether now or just before the election, and we have concluded that the substitution and removal process is very complicated,” said Mike Howell, of the Heritage Foundation, an ultraconservative group in the pay of Donald Trump which promises to pursue and contest the changes that this replacement could induce on the ballots. “We will remain vigilant to ensure that election procedures and integrity are respected,” he added in a statement.