President Joe Biden‘s decision to run for reelection in November has been compared by an academic to the actions of former California Senator Dianne Feinstein and former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who were reluctant to retire, following his performance in Thursday night’s debate against Donald Trump.
During the debate, which took place in Atlanta, Biden, 81, appeared to lose his train of thought at various points, sparking mockery online and renewed concerns about his age and mental fortitude.
In the immediate aftermath, John King, CNN‘s chief national correspondent, said Biden’s performance had sparked a “wide and a very aggressive panic” within his party, while Johanna Maska, a former aide to then-President Barack Obama, said: “Joe Biden can’t put a sentence together. We have to change our candidate.” Following the debate, Biden’s odds of being the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee fell by almost 30 percent on one betting website, though his odds partially recovered later.
Speaking to Newsweek, Mark Shanahan, an expert in American politics who teaches at the University of Surrey in the U.K., compared the situation with Biden to previous dilemmas for progressives involving Feinstein and Ginsburg.
He said: “The problem with any political or judicial elder statesperson is that they never feel as old as others around them perceive them to be. The best parallel for Biden now is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who thought she could outlive Trump’s presidency but whose death ended up shifting the Supreme Court to a conservative bias for a generation. More recently, Dianne Feinstein struggled on in the Senate until the age of 90 despite very obvious physical and cognitive failings.”
“Joe Biden’s campaign team has done a fantastic job disguising his increasing frailty, but last night he was exposed, and his weak and faltering performance in the presidential debate has given his opponent a massive weapon that he won’t hesitate to use time and again if Biden stays on the ticket,” Shanahan continued, adding, “If Biden remains the Democrat candidate for the presidency, his visible frailty, even if his mental acuity remains finely honed, will be his kryptonite.”
A CNN survey of registered voters who watched Thursday night’s debate in Atlanta found that 67 percent believed Trump emerged victorious against 33 percent who thought the same for Biden.
Newsweek contacted representatives of Biden’s 2024 election campaign for comment by email outside usual business hours.
Feinstein, who served as a Democratic senator for California between 1992 and her death in September 2023, faced calls to resign from within her own party earlier in last year when she was absent from Congress for more than two months because of ill health. During this time, the Senate Judiciary Committee was unable to confirm Biden’s judicial nominees, as a panel they usually had a majority on was reduced to a 10-10 split.
Similarly, Ginsburg faced repeated calls to step down from the Supreme Court prior to her death in September 2020 at age 87. When Ginsburg died in officer, Trump, then the president, was able to appoint another conservative Supreme Court justice, who then ruled in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade in June 2022, ending the constitutional right to an abortion.
Thomas Gift, a political scientist who heads the Centre on U.S. Politics at University College London, told Newsweek that in the American system, it can be “impossible” to force elderly political figures to retire against their will.
Gift said: “Taking power away from a politician who’s past his or her prime can be like taking the keys away from an elderly grandparent. You can encourage, push and cajole all that you want. It’s impossible to force them to do something they don’t want to do.
“Biden isn’t the first octogenarian public figure who’s refused to ride into the sunset with his legacy intact. He won’t be the last. The problem is that the stakes in this case—the White House (and, if Biden is to be believed, American democracy itself)—couldn’t be higher.”
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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