Some fires are hard to snuff out. The one that started after President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance on June 27th, through which he stammered only semi-lucidly, is developing into a blaze. For a few days it was only the media—albeit including the columnists and commentators closest to the president—who were calling for him to abandon his bid for re-election.
But on July 2nd the president’s support within the Democratic Party started to crack. Lloyd Doggett, a representative from Texas, became the first sitting Democratic congressman to call for him to stand aside. Betting markets, which had put the odds of the president leaving the race at 25% that morning, had raised them to 75% by the following day.
Other grandees have been hinting at similar views, or at least refusing to excuse Mr Biden’s doddering inarticulacy. Jared Golden, who represents a rural district in Maine, published an op-ed in a local newspaper stating matter-of-factly, “Donald Trump is going to win. And I’m ok with that.” Sheldon Whitehouse, a senator from Rhode Island, told a local tv station, “Like a lot of people, I was pretty horrified by the debate.”
Perhaps most importantly, Nancy Pelosi, a former speaker of the House of Representatives who had initially pooh-poohed concerns about Mr Biden’s fitness, seemed to open the door to doubters by telling an interviewer, “I think it’s a legitimate question to say, ‘Is this an episode—or is this a condition?’”
