Why Biden must withdraw. By The Economist

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THE PRESIDENTIAL debate was awful for Joe Biden, but the cover-up has been worse. It was agony to watch a befuddled old man struggling to recall words and facts. His inability to land an argument against a weak opponent was dispiriting. But the operation by his campaign to deny what tens of millions of Americans saw with their own eyes is more toxic than either, because its dishonesty provokes contempt.

The effect has been to put the White House within Donald Trump’s grasp. Fresh polls have found that voters in the states Mr Biden must win have moved against him. His lead may be in danger even in once-safe states such as Virginia, Minnesota and New Mexico.

Mr Biden deserves to be remembered for his accomplishments and his decency rather than his decline. So it is right that the first senior Democrats have begun to call openly for him to step aside. However, their public expressions are nothing compared with the building wave of private dismay. More of them urgently need to face up to the fact that if they do not speak out now, Mr Trump will win. In order to bring about the political renewal that America now so clearly needs, they must call for change. It is not too late.

Democrats argue, rightly, that Mr Trump is unfit to be president. But the debate and its aftermath have proved Mr Biden unfit, too. First, because of his mental decline. Mr Biden can still appear dynamic during short, scripted appearances. But you cannot run a superpower by autocue. And you cannot put an international crisis on hold because the president is having a bad night. Should someone who cannot finish a sentence about Medicare be trusted with the nuclear codes?

Mr Biden is blameless for his failing powers, but not for a second disqualification, which is his insistence, abetted by his family, senior staff and Democratic elites, that he is still up to the world’s toughest job. Mr Biden’s claim that this election is between right and wrong is ruined by the fact that the existence of his campaign now depends on a lie.

Democrats sneer at the Republican Party for its craven behaviour towards Mr Trump. Again, they are right. Too many Republicans have parroted his falsehoods and lacked the moral courage to speak out against his abuses. Convinced they could outlast him, or that someone else would pay the price for ejecting him, senators and congressmen have put their ambition before their country.

The Democratic Party should look in the mirror, starting with Mr Biden himself. He avers that he failed in the debate because he was tired from jetting around the world, as if his debility were evidence of his vitality. His supporters argue that those awful 90 minutes should not overshadow the past three and a half years. But what matters is whether they foreshadow the next four. Senior Democrats repeating these desperate talking points or waiting in silence for someone else to speak up first may think they are being loyal. Is that loyal to their country or their careers?

Democrats might say that their tactics are just politics. Their ugly means are justified by their honourable ends of saving American democracy from the predations of Mr Trump. That defence does America no favours. The tactic of covering up your own flaws by demonising your opponent has long marred American politics, but using the threat of Mr Trump as a “dictator” to offset Mr Biden’s evident infirmity is a form of blackmail. As the head of state, America’s president embodies the virtues of the republic. The more he is seen as a stubborn old man who leaves the real work to his courtiers, the more he will undermine Americans’ faith in their system of government. Representing America abroad, Mr Biden will project decrepitude—to the delight of China and Russia and the dismay of America’s allies.

There is another option. Mr Biden should withdraw from the campaign. That way, the election might refresh the body politic. The virtue of democracy is that voters can choose their rulers, but Mr Biden and Mr Trump offer a choice between the incapable and the unspeakable. Americans deserve better.

As our new podcast “Boom!” explains, presidential politics is stuck in a rut. Barring Barack Obama, every president since Bill Clinton in 1992 was born in the 1940s. Mr Biden (1942) first campaigned for the presidency 37 years ago, albeit in a fumbling way. At that time Mr Trump (1946) thought about running, too. Their generation came of age during the Vietnam war. It carries around the baggage of campus protests, the greed-is-good era on Wall Street and old fights over race and feminism. Those fights are very different today, and not only because they are more often waged on TikTok.

The stagnation is a failure of the party system. Parties are supposed to be vehicles that bring together factions and interests to bid for power. They have been carjacked. First the Clintons and Bushes seized the wheel. When voters were sick of them, Mr Obama and then Mr Trump staged grassroots rebellions. In today’s Democratic Party the driving seat is being hogged by Mr Biden and his people. Only if Democrats take back control and persuade him to move aside can renewal begin.

The Economist first said in 2022 that Mr Biden should not seek re-election because he was too old. Immediately after the debate we made our case more strongly. A fresh candidate would have just over ten weeks after the convention to make their pitch. Such a candidate might lose, obviously, though even then the catharsis of Mr Biden’s self-sacrifice would help restore American politics.

But we believe that they would have a good chance of winning—a better one than Mr Biden, even if the candidate was Kamala Harris, his relatively unpopular vice-president. They would be fit to govern; and they would, with the exception of Ms Harris, deprive Mr Trump of his strongest arguments against Mr Biden: the responsibility for inflation, immigration and the supposed “witch-hunt” that led to his prosecution. America’s renewal needs to start now. There could be no better way than by choosing a new candidate to defeat Mr Trump. ■