He noticed something. The president looked a little… different. He showed his cell phone to his girlfriend, who was nearby.
“She immediately raised the flag and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to have to do this.Why is he orange??』
Domalewski, a data analyst from San Francisco, started thinking about crabs — and specifically, a strange natural phenomenon that scientists have been observing for some time: Over millions of years, some types of crabs eventually develop a hard shell that gives them a crab-like body shape.
“Now, given the orange tan skin, the fact that his son with a controversial reputation has become a key adviser, and the whole doubling down on his attacks on the media, does that mean that every politician eventually evolves into a Trump?”
Scientists also estimate the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, but now Biden, 82, is facing the most important decision of his 54-year political career. Since his halting and lackluster performance at the presidential debate in late June, there have been calls from his Democratic colleagues, including 22 House members, for him to abandon the nomination and for someone else to take on Trump in November.
For at least some, Biden’s handling of this self-inflicted wound to his candidacy, and the slow revolt within his party, drew parallels — superficial, if obvious — to his 78-year-old rival.
Biden called into his party and his favorite show, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” to blast “elites within the party” who have called him into office, echoing Trump’s habit of calling into “Fox & Friends” and “Hannity” to deliver passionate speeches about his favorite topics. Yes, he has admitted to making mistakes in the debates (not very Trump-like), but to quote one person, he is seen as stubbornly holding fast to his beliefs. Only I can solve it. According to a Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll, 85% of voters believe Biden is too old to serve another term as president, but at a press conference on Thursday, Biden said he wouldn’t drop out of the race even if his advisers gave him data showing that VP Harris is doing better against Trump. (The poll still shows Biden in a close race with Trump nationally, with 60% of respondents saying Trump is too old.) “I believe I’m the best person to run for president,” Biden said. “I beat Trump once and I’ll beat him again.”
“He’s like Trump in that he doesn’t listen,” said Jason Palmer, the only Democrat to win American Samoa’s primary this year and then withdraw, beating Biden by any measure.
“Donald Trump sometimes says loudly, ‘I’m the only one who can do it.’ Some of the things Joe Biden said in his interview with George Stephanopoulos sounded like, ‘I’m the only one who can hold NATO together and protect the free world.’ Thinking that you’re the only one is not the right way to run for president.”
(No, Palmer will not run again if Biden withdraws.)
In an interview after the debate debacle, Stephanopoulos made a point: “The core of your argument against Donald Trump is that he is only interested in his own interests, and that he is putting his own interests above the interests of the country. How do you respond to the criticism that by continuing to run, you are doing the same thing?”
“Oh, come on,” Biden responded. He laughed and said, “Well, I don’t think the critics know what they’re talking about.”
“Donald Trump is a convicted criminal who tried to subvert our democracy, promised to jail and prosecute his opponents, and threatened violence if he loses the election. Anyone engaging in this false equivalence has truly lost track,” Biden campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hitt said in an emailed statement.
Biden also told a press conference that “there are other candidates who can beat Trump,” but said starting from scratch would be “terrible.”
Meanwhile, some Democrats have refused to publicly break with the president while anonymously sharing their true feelings about him with the press, another echo of Republicans past and present in the Trump era who have engaged in similar behavior. “I wish we’d been more courageous,” an anonymous state Democratic party chairman was reported to have admitted to NBC News this week.
Let’s be clear: These people do not believe Biden and Trump are comparable to each other in terms of policies, personality, or the vision of the America they want to run. Their conflict is based on the idea that someone like Trump… actually Someone like him shouldn’t be sitting in the Oval Office.
For Brian Beutler, author of Substack’s newsletter “Off Message,” I wanna see As Biden leaves office, the way the president and his allies have responded to the threats to his candidacy (and possibly his legacy) underscores how unusual and disastrous this is for a career politician who has always shown civility and respect for Washington’s institutions and political relationships. Biden, he says, is in a desperate situation.
“Any powerful politician facing an internal rebellion will do anything to avoid losing control of the situation,” Beutler said. “And that’s exactly what Biden is doing.”
Still, the comparisons to Trump are limited: Whatever advice he may be getting from his son, Beutler noted, Biden is not about to give Hunter a security clearance or appoint him as a senior adviser, as Trump did with his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Countering criticism with defiance and bravado likely worked for Trump, who is well on his way to winning the nomination and remaking the party in his image. For Trump, the idea was “to bypass the Republican Party and get his message out there in a more unfiltered way, in a way that he could control,” says Katherine Kramer Brownell, an associate professor at Purdue University who studies politics and pop culture. “Instead of relying on journalists or anyone else to get his message out there, he tried to take responsibility for it.”
The question is whether trying to own the narrative in this particular way works for Biden, which could determine his future in the campaign.
If Biden does step down, Beutler envisions a much more diplomatic exit than we’d expect from Trump. It’s hard to imagine Biden writing down the names of lawmakers and arranging for them to lose in primaries, the kind of retaliation Trump has sought against Republicans who opposed him. “Biden would step down, as he has done everything else, with compromise and consideration,” Beutler says. “And that would completely break down the parallels between Biden and Trump.”
For now, Biden is staying on. Former President Trump appeared on his favorite cable show this week to offer his own analysis of the situation.
“He’s got an ego,” Trump said, sounding very much like his critics, “and he doesn’t want to quit.”
