NEW YORK — If President Joe Biden successfully resists some extraordinary media calls to abandon his reelection bid after last week’s debate, he might reflect on the moment MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski looked into the camera Monday to begin a 15 minute essay in support.
The “Morning Joe” co-host decried the “screaming, mocking, mocking” headlines and editorials suggesting Biden would quit the campaign after several wavering, confused passages from the president during his CNN debate with former President Donald Trump.
The editorial staff of the New York Times urged Biden’s departure, along with some of the newspaper’s columnists. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution followed suit in a front-page editorial on Sunday. The editor of the New Yorker, David Remnick, wrote that “there is honor in recognizing the harsh demands of the moment.” The Washington Post said it hoped Biden would do some soul searching this weekend.
“It was a collective mental breakdown unlike anything I’ve ever seen,” said Chris Whipple, author of “The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House.”
Perhaps nowhere were raw nerves more exposed than on “Morning Joe,” where co-hosts Brzezinski and her husband, Joe Scarborough, were among Biden’s most consistent supporters. With Biden reportedly a frequent viewer, there’s often a sense that the show’s guests are talking to the president, much like Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” when Trump was in power.
A funeral director in Scarborough suggested Friday that Biden might consider abandoning the campaign, saying that “if he were CEO and he achieved a feat like that, which Fortune 500 company would keep him?” It led to some awkward moments with his wife, such as when Scarborough said she didn’t need to raise her voice when opposing criticism of Biden.
Still, Scarborough was absent Monday — due to a planned vacation, his wife and network said — and Brzezinski opened the show on her own.
She admitted that Biden’s debate performance was terrible and blamed his staff for overworking him. Age brings wisdom, but its harmful effects must be controlled, she said. She listed how Biden had recovered from personal and political problems in the past.
“I still believe in Joe Biden,” she said. “I learned that leaving him out is always a mistake, and that doing so now would be catastrophic for the country.”
A single guest on the show, Mara Gay from the Times editorial staff, was on hand to defend her newspaper’s position, and Brzezinski lashed out at those who focused more on Biden than Trump. “I don’t want to hear from editors who missed or got used to a huge story on the other side,” she said.
The Times editorial, published Sunday, called Biden “the shadow of a great public servant.”
“The greatest public service Mr. Biden can perform now is to announce that he will no longer run for re-election,” the newspaper said.
Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote that watching the Biden-Trump debate “made me cry.” Colleague Lydia Polgreen wrote that a Democratic ticket led by Vice President Kamala Harris “has a pretty nice ring to it.” And Maureen Dowd, who has an extensive history on Biden, headlined her column: “The Ghastly vs. The Ghostly.’
If Biden were to continue the race, he would be guilty of Trump-like self-interest, she wrote. “He has age-related problems,” Dowd wrote, “and they only go in one direction.”
Whipple said he doesn’t expect op-eds in The Times to have much influence in the White House. The Biden campaign has been critical of the amount of space the paper has devoted to voters’ concerns about the president and his age.
“Nothing will make Joe Biden more determined to run for re-election than an editorial in the New York Times urging him to resign,” Whipple said. “It’s like oxygen for him.”
Biden thrives on being underestimated, he said. Biden, who once spoke of being a transition president, has been surprised by the way Trump and his movement have remained politically strong. The desire to stop him, along with a politician’s traditional instinct of not wanting to leave the stage, has fueled his campaign, Whipple said.
The author said Biden must now erase what The New Yorker’s Remnick wrote: the painful experience of watching him “wander into futility on stage.”
“It will forever erase all those vague and qualified descriptions from White House insiders about good and bad days,” Remnick wrote. “You looked at it, and at the most basic human level you could only feel pity for the man and, even more, fear for the country.”
The editorial headline of the influential Georgian newspaper read: “It’s time for Biden to pass the torch.”
But in another swing state, Pennsylvania, The Philadelphia Inquirer took a different path. Biden should not be the presidential candidate who drops out, the newspaper said in an editorial this weekend.
“There was only one person at the debate who doesn’t deserve to run for president,” the Inquirer wrote. “The sooner Trump leaves the stage, the better off the country will be.”
___
David Bauder writes about media for The Associated Press. Follow him up http://twitter.com/dbauder.
