WASHINGTON — For nearly an hour Thursday night, President Joe Biden faced reporters and presented ideas shaped by half a century of elected office.
He talked about gun violence and taxes, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s economic influence over Europe.
But at this perilous moment in Biden’s candidacy, policy positions aren’t necessarily what his audience needed to hear.
As he struggles to recover from last month’s debate performance, Biden is being judged less on the substance of his answers than on the style and clarity of his delivery.
Democratic leaders are considering forcing him off the ticket. To quell the rebellion, Biden, 81, needs to prove he can speak in the clear, confident tone that voters, or at least members of his party, expect from a president.
The press conference, which capped off a three-day NATO summit in Washington, was a major test — the biggest since the debate and perhaps the biggest before the Democratic presidential nominating convention next month, if Biden can persevere. There was no teleprompter to guide him through the investigation, nor pre-approved questions that had been given to reporters.
By no means was this a disastrous demonstration to compare with the debate. But it wasn’t a courageous performance that could put an end to doubts about his physical condition once and for all.
“It may be too little, too late,” said one Democratic congressman, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Biden misspoke just minutes after his first response, referring to Vice President Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump.”
Donald Trump quickly seized on the gaffe, mocking Biden on his social media site: “Great job, Joe.”
A similar slip-up occurred just hours earlier. Introducing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the summit, Biden mistakenly called him “President Putin.”
There were audible gasps from the audience, and when he realized his mistake, Biden quickly corrected himself.
“When on the same day you refer to your vice president as ‘Vice President Trump’ and Zelenskyy as Putin, you are doomed,” a Democratic strategist told NBC News.
Two weeks after a debate in which he struggled to finish a sentence or complete a thought, Biden has little room for error. Any failure will certainly be magnified and seen as evidence of illness.
“It wasn’t as terribly bad as the debate, but it wasn’t exactly reassuring either,” said Rosa Brooks, a senior Defense Department official in the Obama administration and now a professor at Georgetown Law School. “He was clearly working very, very hard to maintain every train of thought and not always succeeding.”
Biden’s aides were thrilled with his performance. They believe he has shown a political dominance that Trump could never hope to match.
Andrew Bates, White House press spokesman, wrote on social media: “To answer the question on everyone’s mind: No, Joe Biden does not have a doctorate in foreign affairs. He is simply very good.
Biden’s dilemma is that, with so much attention focused on his syntax, he cannot draw distinctions with Trump effectively. He did his best at the press conference. European leaders, he said, are telling him: “You have to win. He [Trump] It would be a disaster.”
Another test will come on Monday, when Biden will give an interview to NBC News’ Lester Holt. Until then, he will have to avoid mass defections from fellow Democrats who would prefer to see a younger candidate, perhaps Harris, at the top of the ticket.
The end of the NATO summit could open the floodgates for Democrats who didn’t want to be seen as bailing out the president in front of dozens of other allied leaders.
A new desertion occurred just as the summit was decreasing.
Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., issued a statement asking Biden to step aside minutes after the press conference ended.
Biden, he wrote, “must pave the way for a new generation of leaders.”
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
