President Biden's Growing List of Worries

Ryan Heshmati

July 12, 2024

This week, the Biden campaign took several tough political blows. Starting with an Op-ed in the New Yorks Times by George Clooney and concluding with a couple of embarrassing gaffes by President Biden. While the eighty-one-year-old is insistent that he can and will beat Former President Trump in November, enthusiasm around his campaign as the right one to beat Trump has become harder and harder to justify.

On July 10th, Moviestar George Clooney, a major Democratic supporter, publicly warned Americans that Joe Biden’s current state is significantly different from that of 2020. Having recently helped the president with a major fundraiser, his decision to publicly call for President Biden to step out of the race marked a major hit to the campaign. Clooney echoed what many who have called for the president to step aside have expressed: admiration for the president but, nevertheless,a strong feeling that the party needs a new nominee.

On Thursday, July 11th, President Biden made the mistake of referring to President Zelenskyy of Ukraine as “President Putin” at an important NATO summit. To make matters worse, in a press conference likely intended to showcase the president’s alertness and ability to answer questions from the press on the spot, he made yet another embarrassing mistake, referring to Vice President Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump.”

While some might argue the president’s overall performance was not bad, Mychael Schnell of The Hill points out, “Democratic Reps. Jim Himes (Conn.), Scott Peters (Calif.) and Eric Sorensen (Ill.) said Biden should step aside minutes after he concluded his roughly hourlong press conference, arguing he is not the strongest candidate to defeat former President Trump in November.” The timing of the calls for Biden to step out of the race, at the very least, indicates the conference did not do enough to quell Democrats’ concerns about the president.  

This week was not an easy one for President Biden. He suffered a public blow with George Clooney’s decision to publish his call for a new nominee in the New York Times, and his gaffes later in the week were of no help to his campaign, either. The president has been firm that he is going to stay in the 2024 race and win, but it is unclear how many more blows his campaign can take before even larger numbers of elected Democrats come together and make calls for a new nominee.