The horrible assassination attempt on Donald Trump has underscored Joe Biden’s dire political situation. Americans hope the awful events in Butler, Pa., will inspire the reversal of our ever-coarsening political culture, as Mr. Biden called for on Sunday night. It’s now Mr. Trump’s turn, and his moment, to answer that call with a more unifying vision as his party meets this week in Milwaukee.
Nonetheless, politics will march forward — and have no doubt, Mr. Biden is losing this race. The decision by leaders of the Democratic National Committee to ratchet up the calendar and try to confirm him as the party’s nominee before the convention only adds to the feeling of desperation that surrounds him.
Democrats and other Trump opponents know this and most are in full panic. A Republican convention that celebrates the party nominee surviving a would-be assassin’s bullet while also drawing a stark and, we can say it, opportunistic contrast between a vibrant Donald Trump and an aging Joe Biden will be a success for the Republicans. Democrats are in for a very long political week.
The total war between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden has now raged for eight years and exhausted our nation. I’ve been proud to be on Joe Biden’s side in that war, despite my conservatism and my years of proudly working for the pre-Trump G.O.P. But America needs a fresh path forward. Joe Biden cannot offer that. A new candidate, a centrist Democrat, could.
Mr. Biden now faces that grim reaper of politics: If you are perceived as a certain loser, you will become one. Campaign psychology is based on fear. While a candidate’s supporters will boast, bluster and project steely confidence, deep down they share the same quiet terror: “What if we … lose?”
Among Democrats, the terror isn’t quiet anymore. The grim specter of a President Trump once again lurching around the Oval Office has made the thought of losing this election especially horrifying .
If Mr. Biden remains the Democratic nominee, the age problem will not go away. The concrete perception of Mr. Biden as too old is reinforced by everything he does in public. No disingenuous spin blitz by his loyalists or flurry of teleprompter-driven campaign events can jackhammer away the heavy weight sinking Mr. Biden.
The telltale signs of a vertiginous loss in public confidence, in spite of the office, are all there: Mr. Biden’s energy draining fast, supporters becoming silent, donors vanishing. Polls dropping, staff infighting erupts and political allies who smell certain defeat start to recalibrate their support, prizing their own political survival above all. The phones seem to no longer be ringing as much.
The decades of humiliations and setbacks Joe Biden has suffered on his long, difficult climb to the presidency have hardened him, like any veteran politician, to the point where perspective can be lost. Politics rewards slogging relentlessly forward even when it seems to make no sense. No successful politician I have ever known was a quitter. Such iron determination and drive is usually a great strength in politics, but for Mr. Biden in this campaign, it is now a crippling weakness.
This presidential campaign has become entirely about age because Mr. Biden decided to run for re-election at 81. It was an act of hubris and guaranteed that instead of a campaign about Donald Trump, we would have one about Joe Biden.
While the Biden team may have desired a campaign that focused on lauding the president’s formidable record over the past four years, that was always an impossible dream. This presidential campaign, like all presidential campaigns, is about the future. And Mr. Biden, a patriot from yesterday, cannot win a campaign about tomorrow.
So the spiral has begun.
Joe Biden will leave the August Democratic convention no younger, but with a party divided and in despair. Big donors are already on strike at his largest SuperPAC. His campaign is at risk of becoming outspent and outgunned in the swing-state television wars, further feeding the panic of certain defeat. Democratic congressional and Senate campaign consultants eyeing tough races are now grimly scheming about how to avoid the president on the stump. Horse-race polls, a happy narcotic for donors and supporters and political allies when they are good, are becoming a daily morale crusher. Political forecasters will soon point to the possibility of a full Republican sweep of Congress.
Now, in the wake of the assassination attempt on Mr. Trump, a new doom caucus of senior Democratic sources has surfaced in the news media, essentially throwing in the towel. They believe that public good will toward the former president will now propel him back into office.
Perhaps.
But while it appears a single evil man tried to change history with blood and murder on Saturday, a good man has his own power to legitimately change history in a heroic way this month.
If Mr. Biden stepped aside in a pivotal moment of gracious self-sacrifice, he would secure his place as a true hero to Democrats and Trump opponents of all political persuasions. Mr. Biden should seize his moment in history, release his grip on the nomination and let democracy take over the Democratic Party. Release party grass-roots leaders and allow delegates to choose a new, winning candidate. A candidate of the future.
The Democratic Party is full of younger potential presidential candidates who terrify the Trump campaign. Likely general election winners who would instantly flip the fear equation, unload the age issue on the 78-year-old G.O.P. nominee and send the Republicans into a panic of their own. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Gavin Newsom of California come to mind.
Beyond a politically powerful reset of the Democratic campaign, a younger, forward-looking Democratic candidate would also well serve the moment President Biden called us to face in his speech to the nation Sunday. We need to put the acidic politics of the last eight years behind us. A new candidate could break the partisan fever and give the country a clear choice between moving forward and moving back.
My 90-year-old father, a scrappy lifelong labor Democrat who likes and respects Joe Biden, called me from Detroit with a review of the president’s NATO news conference. “You know, he’s been at the top of politics for 50 years,” he told me. “For one guy, hasn’t that been enough?”
The post Biden Must Know How This Should End appeared first on New York Times.