Phoenix – Joe Biden’s time in public office is now behind him, but his Age and mental acuity They have become a fire test for the next leaders in their party.
A new book that alleges that the White House attendees covered Biden’s physical and mental decline have put the questions about Biden’s health again in the center of care, months after former vice president Kamala Harris lost to President Donald Trump. Several potential democratic contenders have been asked for the 2028 nomination in recent days if they believe they were decreasing in office or if it should have sought re -election before a disastrous debate performance led to his retirement.
Many Democrats would prefer to focus on Trump’s second mandate. Trump has done everything possible to avoid that, mentioning the name of Biden an average of six times a day During their first 100 days in office, according to an NBC news analysis, and Republicans have followed their example, betting that voters frustrated by Trump’s policy movements will still prefer it to the memories of an unpopular presidency.
In the race for the governor of Virginia, one of this year’s highest profile competitions, Republican Winsome Earle-Sears is organizing a couple of television ads that link the Democrat Abigail Spanberger to Biden, with images of The two embraced And the former president called her friend.
“Joe Biden’s stench still persists in the Democratic Party,” said Sawyer Hachtt. “We have to do hard work to fix that, and I think that includes telling the truth, frankly, about when we were wrong.”
Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut He told Politico This week, “there is no doubt” that Biden, now 82, experienced a cognitive impairment as president.
Pete ButtigiegThe former Secretary of Transportation was not so forceful, but he still did not stop to defend Biden’s decision to run. He replied “maybe” when asked Tuesday if the Democratic Party would have been better if Biden would not have tried to run for a second term.
“At this time, with the advantage of retrospective, I think most people would agree that this is the case,” Buttigieg told journalists during a stop in Iowa.
Illinois government JB Pritzker He said he did not see signs of mental or physical decline in his meetings with Biden.
“I saw it several times,” he told CNN this week. “I certainly went to the White House every time there was an opportunity to present the case of something for people in my state. And I never had the experience of nothing more than a guy who brought to the table many good ideas about how to solve problems.”
The book “Original without”, by jokes Jake Tapper of CNN and Alex Thompson de Axios, revives a central controversy of the Biden presidency: their decision to run for a second mandate despite the voters, including the Democrats, telling the polls that should not be executed again. Biden would have been 86 years at the end of a second term if I had won in November.
A Biden spokesman did not respond to a request for comments.
“We continued waiting for anything that shows where Joe Biden had to make a presidential decision or where national security was threatened or where he could not do his job,” the spokesman told many media in response to the book.
Even when the Democratic leaders dismissed both a series of verbal flubes and republican accusations about their sharpness in decline, Biden faced generalized doubts within their own party.
In January 2022, only one year after Biden’s first term, an AP-NORC center survey for public affairs research found that only 48% of the Democrats wanted them to seek re-election. That fell to 37% of the Democrats in An AP-NORC survey conducted in February 2023. Three quarters of Americans, and 69% of Democrats, said in August 2023 They believed that Biden was too old to serve as president for another four -year period.
And shortly after his FLOP debate, Almost two thirds of the Democrats Said Biden should retire from the race.
Biden and former First Lady Jill Biden appeared in “The View” of ABC in a preventive defense of their health and decision making before the first extracts of “original sin” were published.
Said He is responsible for Trump’s victory But he attributed the loss of Harris, at least in part, to sexism and racism. He argued that he would have won if he had remained the Democratic candidate. Both Bidens rejected concerns about their cognitive deterioration.
Patricia Mcenerney, a 74 -year -old Democrat in Goodyear, Arizona, said Biden should not have tried to run again.
“I think the way it ended is sad,” he said.
She compared it to Douglas MacArthur, World War II and the general of the Korean War, dismissed by President Harry Truman.
“I think he needs to stop giving interviews. I think that would help,” said Mcenerney. “As MacArthur said, the generals simply fade.”
Janet Stumps, a 66 -year -old Democrat also from Goodyear, a suburb of Phoenix, had a different opinion.
“I don’t think it hurts Democrats,” Stumps said. “I feel bad because I feel he has to defend himself. I don’t think he has to do it. They all get older. And the fact that he did what he did at his age, I think he should be praised for it.”
Hettt, the Democratic strategist, predicted that Biden will not be an important factor in the intermediate works of 2026 or the presidential primaries of 2028. But he said that the Democrats who want the voters to trust them would be well served “by telling the truth about the errors that our party made in the period prior to 2024”.
“These mistakes were largely driven by Joe Biden, and I think that any Democrat who is not willing to say that he is not really prepared to face the voters, who want the truth and want authenticity,” said Hachett.
Rick Wilson, a former Republican strategist who co-founded the Anti-Trump the Lincoln Project group, said the Republicans want to talk about Biden to avoid defending Trump. But he said the strategy is crazy.
In addition to “political nerds,” he said, “nobody else cares.”
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The writer of Associated Press, Thomas Beaumont, contributed to this report by Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
