Joe Biden To Remain In 2024 Presidential Race

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Incumbent U.S. president Joe Biden will reportedly remain in the 2024 presidential election at the urging of his family – led by his wife, Jill Biden, and son, Hunter Biden.

That controversial decision could set up a showdown between Biden’s family and a growing chunk of the Democratic establishment at the party’s quadrennial convention – scheduled for August 19-22, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois.

The Bidens gathered over the weekend at Camp David – the presidential retreat near Frederick County, Maryland – to discuss his future as a presidential candidate following Biden’s downright disastrous debate performance last Thursday night against former president Donald Trump, the 2024 Republican nominee.

Biden bumbled, stumbled and fumbled his way through the 90-minute encounter – showcasing the cognitive decline that has concerned Democrats for years (even dating back to the 2020 campaign). That decline has been concealed by Biden’s closest advisors – and by many of the media outlets now turning on the incumbent president. Conversely, those who pointed out Biden’s stumbles were accused of promoting “cheap fakes” – or clips which intentionally misrepresented his cognitive condition.

Last week in Atlanta, Georgia, the “cheap fakes” were revealed to be the truth.

The 81-year-old’s answers to many debate questions were an “incoherent jumble,” noted Reason reporter Christian Britschgi.

“The president repeatedly struggled with constructing germane responses, instead delivering halting, hard-to-follow answers that often bordered on incoherence,” Britschgi added.

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BREAKING: President Biden has decided to stay in the race after a meeting with his family on Sunday, and a massive campaign is now underway to support his re-election and silence debates about his age or worries over his disastrous debate performance on Thursday night. Backed… pic.twitter.com/7Xf0FDqp7A

— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) July 1, 2024

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“His demeanor and cadence revealed a man struggling with the basic demands of a 90-minute-ish televised debate,” Britschgi concluded. “In a debate, one garbled answer is forgivable. Maybe a few are. A garbled, borderline incoherent performance is bad. In fact, it’s incredibly concerning.”

While it’s too early to assess the adverse impact Biden’s debate debacle is likely to have on independent voters in the critical swings states which will determine the upcoming election, many Democrats – and left-leaning media institutions – moved quickly to call for Biden to step down.

“Voters … cannot be expected to ignore what was instead plain to see: Mr. Biden is not the man he was four years ago,” the editorial board of The New York Times wrote. “The president’s performance cannot be written off as a bad night or blamed on a supposed cold, because it affirmed concerns that have been mounting for months or even years. Even when Mr. Biden tried to lay out his policy proposals, he stumbled.”

The paper called on Democrats to “find the courage to speak plain truths to the party’s leader.”

“The confidants and aides who have encouraged the president’s candidacy and who sheltered him from unscripted appearances in public should recognize the damage to Mr. Biden’s standing and the unlikelihood that he can repair it,” it added.

Instead, several of those key aides would appear to be on the way out after Biden’s family reportedly blamed them for the debate debacle.

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“Members of Joe Biden’s family privately trashed his top campaign advisers at Camp David this weekend, blaming them for the president’s flop in Thursday’s debate and urging Biden to fire or demote people in his political high command,” reporters Jonathan Lemire and Lauren Egan reported for Politico.

Lemire and Egan went on to note that senior Biden advisor Anita Dunn, her husband Bob Bauer (Biden’s top lawyer) and former Biden chief of staff Ron Klain were the three heads most likely to find their way to the chopping block.

Family members reportedly complained Biden’s top advisors did not adequately prepare him “to pivot more to go on the attack” against Trump – and that they “bogged (him) down too much on defending his record rather than outlining a vision for a second term.” Family members also complained Biden was “over-worked and not well-rested,” according to the Politico report.

Meanwhile, a public statement of support for Biden from former president Barack Obama was also coming under scrutiny.

Last week, Obama – arguably the most influential Democrat in America – took to social media to show he was still in Biden’s corner.

“Bad debate nights happen,” Obama wrote on X. “Trust me, I know. But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself. Between someone who tells the truth; who knows right from wrong and will give it to the American people straight — and someone who lies through his teeth for his own benefit. Last night didn’t change that, and it’s why so much is at stake in November.”

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Did Obama mean it? Not according to conservative commentator Tucker Carlson.

“In private, Obama is telling people Biden can’t win, and he is therefore in favor of an open convention,” Carlson wrote on X. “Obama will not say whom he supports, nor as of yesterday afternoon had he met personally with Biden to deliver the message.”

Carlson added that “the next generation of potential Democratic candidates understands all this as an opportunity and they’re circling.”

Compounding Democrats’ problem, though? It’s not immediately clear whether replacing Biden on the ticket will have the effect they desire.

In the aftermath of Thursday’s debate disaster, Biden’s campaign released polling numbers from an über-progressive outfit, Data for Progress. According to the Biden campaign, all of the names being bandied about as potential replacements for Biden on the ticket – vice president Kamala Harris, transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, U.S. senator Cory Booker, California governor Gavin Newsom and Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, to name just a few – all fared worse against Trump than the incumbent.

Keep it tuned to this media outlet as the fallout from Biden’s debate continues to reverberate throughout the Democratic establishment … and in the thinking of those critical swing state independents.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR …

Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina and before that he was a bass guitarist and dive bar bouncer. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.

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