Senior Democrats are quietly knifing him in off-the-record briefings, but are queuing up to profess their loyalty in public. It is a wretched affair, reminiscent of the way cowardly Republicans kow-towed for years to Donald Trump while privately claiming to despise him.
Aiding his staying power, Biden was in his element in Washington last night as host of the 75th anniversary Nato summit and boasting about how the alliance is stronger than it has ever been. At least, God forbid, he hasn’t had to endure the G7 jet lag that supposedly did him in at the CNN debate. Soon, attention will switch 24/7 to the looming Trump circus — the Republican convention which opens in Wisconsin on Monday. No wonder Biden thinks the revolt of the “elites” (as, pace Trump, he now calls his critics) is over and that he will be the Democratic nominee for president, come what may.
Yet a few clumsy gaffes could send his campaign into a death spiral. Arguably, it is already beyond recovery. In Wisconsin, Trump has pulled ahead of Biden by 44 to 38 points (with Robert F Kennedy Jr on nine) and is significantly ahead in all the important swing states. We know Biden feels relaxed about giving the election his best shot and losing — as he told his MSNBC pals, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, at the start of this week — but 50 per cent of American voters remain opposed to Trump and have no interest in appeasing Biden’s monumental vanity.
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