The crisis over president Joe Biden’s suitability to remain as Democratic candidate in the November election will reach a crucial moment on Friday evening when he sits down for his first in-depth interview since his on-screen debate implosion a week ago.
The president undertook the ceremonial July 4th White House celebrations intent on blocking out the persistent calls from erstwhile supporters to accept that the time has come for him to drop out of the race. A July 4th CNN poll suggests that Republican Party nominee Donald Trump now enjoys a five-point lead over Mr Biden.
Mr Biden’s interview with ABC host George Stephanopoulos will be recorded earlier on Friday. While the original plan had been to air portions of the recording before showing it in full on Sunday morning, the network confirmed on Thursday that it will broadcast the interview in its entirety on Friday at 8pm. The president will also hold two campaign events in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, both key swing states in which recent polls indicate he has lost critical ground to his Republican rival Mr Trump.
The polls follow an alarming debate performance against Mr Trump in Atlanta last week.
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Democratic election strategists are struggling to reconcile themselves to a situation in which competency in a television interview – a basic requirement for any political aspirant – has come to represent a defining moment in what has become a chaotic nomination process.
In a message sent to supporters this week Mr Biden reinforced his intention to remain in situ as the party’s presumptive nominee. “Let me say this as clearly and simply as I can: I’m running. I’m the Democratic Party’s nominee. No one is pushing me out. I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end, and we are going to win this election,” he said through an email which ended with a habitual request for supporters to “pitch in a few bucks”.
However, Netflix founder Reed Hastings, one of the biggest donors to the Democratic war chest, has joined the public dissenters from the official Democratic Party line of support for the president to stay on. Mr Hastings emailed the New York Times to say that “Biden needs to step aside to allow a vigorous Democratic leader to beat Trump and keep us safe and prosperous”.
His view was echoed by another significant financial contributor Whitney Tilson.
“I think Donald Trump represents an existential threat and we should do whatever maximises our chances of defeating him in November,” he said in a television interview.
“I agreed with President Biden a year ago when he decided to run again that he represented the best chance. Unfortunately over the past year Father Time has caught up with him. I don’t think he should listen to me. I don’t think he should look in the mirror and listen to himself. I think he should ask the American people,” he said before referencing midweek polling showing that 74 per cent and, in a separate poll, 80 per cent of respondents believe that Mr Biden is too old to run again.
“So it is no wonder that he has gone from three points down to Trump nationally to six points in multiple high-quality polls, which tells me with four months to go until the election he is going to lose possibly in a landslide, and I know he doesn’t want that. So I believe he will do what he has always done and put his party and, most importantly, his country first and step aside.”
That view was echoed by Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts representative, who said he has “grave concerns” about President Biden’s ability to argue his party’s case in the electoral environments of television interviews, town halls and campaign stops.
Silencing those doubts through one sit-down interview will require all of Mr Biden’s political skills
