Rambling Biden is on the ropes – will his Democratic challengers strike?

The president’s poll ratings are a horror show, and even Democrats want him out, writes veteran US-watcher Jon Sopel. After another stumbling performance in front of the cameras, will his rivals seize their moment?

Joe Biden’s recent speech in Vietnam was slow, a tiny bit slurred and barely audible (AP)

If you were to ask Joe Biden, he’d probably agree entirely with Claudius in Hamlet where he says that “when sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions”. The US president might upgrade battalions to brigades or even divisions, such has been the quantity of ordure hitting the AC unit this past week.

In many ways, Biden has had a successful week globetrotting, with some serious achievements in India at the G20 and then building relations in Vietnam, where the White House wants to show China that the pivot towards Asia Pacific is serious, and that the US stands with its allies.

But as any foreign leader knows, just because you are strutting the international stage, it doesn’t mean your domestic woes are left behind.

This week, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced he is launching an impeachment inquiry into President Biden’s conduct and whether there was corruption in the business dealings of his son, Hunter, of which Joe was a beneficiary. A swirl of allegations has been made by Republican lawmakers and their sympathetic outriders in the media.

A pastor with strong links to former president Trump told me earnestly on our podcast the other day that everyone is innocent until proven guilty – but when I challenged his continued reference to the “Biden crime family”, his justification was that it was clear they were all up to no good.

Let me add, so far not a shred of evidence has been presented publicly that links the president to anything untoward his son was doing. The move by McCarthy to start an impeachment inquiry has much more to do with his need to keep his fruitcake far-right happy than anything else. (Spoiler alert: they don’t seem to be mollified.)

Republicans know that simple repetition of the phrase “Biden crime family” is having an effect. It is seeping into the public consciousness; it is hitting Biden’s poll ratings. So whether an impeachment ever materialises is less consequential than the damage it might be doing to his standing with the public.

Latest polling in the US is a horror story. Approval ratings are on the floor. Three-quarters of those questioned said they’re seriously concerned about Biden’s age and his mental acuity if he were to be elected for a second term. Two-thirds of Democrat – Democrat! – voters want a different candidate for 2024.

And then there was what happened in Vietnam to underline that. At a news conference in Hanoi, Biden started some rambling reminiscence about a John Wayne movie that had something to do with climate change, but – perhaps in common with Biden – I completely lost the thread of what he was saying.

His speech is slow, a tiny bit slurred and barely audible. He has become the hoarse whisperer.

At the end of his presser, midway through a rambling answer, his press secretary cut in to announce “this news conference is over”. A White House official deciding she can – and must – interrupt the elected head of state? Wow.

Biden’s admirers say this is all grossly unfair and point to the legislative victories, the slaying of inflation in the US, his reassertion of American leadership in Nato, the support for Ukraine – and, yes, the progress made this last week in Vietnam and India. The White House wants to fight back, saying that we are all falling for a Fox News-manufactured trope of old age and decline.

But perception is reality, and even one of the great wise owls of the liberal journalist establishment, David Ignatius, has penned an op-ed in the Washington Post in the last couple of days saying Biden should call it a day on trying to win a second term. Ignatius’s words will ripple far beyond the Washington Beltway. Within minutes, the Trump machine was quoting his column approvingly.

So does the Democratic Party have a Plan B? Well, no. But unlike British politics, where parties are all powerful, in the US it is all about individuals seizing their moment – as Barack Obama did in the run-up to 2008, or for that matter Donald Trump a few years later.

Vice President Kamala Harris would be the obvious name, but her poll ratings are no higher than her boss’s. Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary who ran for the nomination in 2020, is articulate, telegenic and very much in the mainstream of Democratic Party politics. But if 2016 – when Hillary Clinton was vanquished by Trump – showed a streak of misogyny in the American people, is the US ready for an openly gay president in 2024?

The governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, is formidably talented – and Michigan is a must-win state for the Dems. The Republicans had hoped to take control of the governor’s mansion in the midterms last year, but she won by a massive 10-point margin. She seems to have turned a swing state into a swung state.

But the one really to watch is the governor of California, Gavin Newsom. Good-looking and suave, he’s been out stumping for Biden, in a move that, of course, is designed to bolster the president… but which massively raises his own national profile. He raised eyebrows when he agreed to an hour-long sit-down interview with Fox’s most loyal Trump cipher, Sean Hannity. Newsom was smart and unflustered, had command of detail, was concise and to the point. All of which led some to draw flattering contrasts with the man whose position he was seeking to assist.

The odds are that 2024 will be a Biden-versus-Trump contest — the 2020 rematch. But I wouldn’t bet my last Reese’s Cup on it.