Chuck Schumer denied on Sunday that his party misled the public about the extent of Joe Biden’s decline as presidential insiders tell news publications that the lame-duck president still believes he could have won the 2024 election.
The leader of the Senate Democratic caucus, now in the minority in the upper chamber, sat down with NBC’s Meet the Press and spoke about the incumbent president’s legacy in an interview on Sunday.
Moderator Kristen Welker became the first of the DC press corps to put it to a member of Democratic leadership directly, asking the senator: “What do you say to Americans who feel as though you and other top Democrats misled them about President Biden’s mental acuity?”
“Look, we didn’t,” Schumer responded. “Let’s look at President Biden. He’s had an amazing record. The legislation we passed, one of the most significant groups of legislation since the New Deal, since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Putting in 235 judges – a record.”
“He’s a patriot. He’s a great guy,” the top Senate Democrat went on. “And when he stepped down, he did it on his own because he thought it was better, not only for the Democratic Party, but for America. We should all salute him.”
But Welker pressed him with a follow-up question: a simple yes-or-no as to whether Schumer believed his political ally had the physical and mental stamina to serve another four years in the White House.
“Well, I’m not going to speculate,” he said.
Their conversation comes as the Democratic Party as a whole is facing a reckoning over its future amid accusations from its own of abandoning key demographics including the working class of America in a vain attempt to win over more affluent and conservative suburban voters. The party is set to elect a new chair at the end of the month, and the race is hotly contested. Schumer is backing Ben Wikler, the chair of the Wisconsin state Democrats.
At the center of Democrats’ anxieties is the popular vote victory of Donald Trump, who won that accolade for the first time in 2024 as Kamala Harris’s campaign was swept in battleground states. Her campaign and Biden’s circle of political advisers continue to dispute the reason for her defeat to this day.
The vice president’s team has been pretty clear that they now view the election as having been unwinnable due to voter anger over Biden’s age, and how the White House and broader Democratic sphere handled his obvious decline until it became unavoidable at a June debate with Donald Trump — one that took place before either candidate was formally nominated, an unprecedented move in modern times.
Chuck Schumer shakes hands with Joe Biden during an event at the White House this week. The senator insists his party did not mislead the public (AP)
Biden’s team, now in a morose mood, is now focused on defining the 46th president’s legacy before he leaves office in a few days.
NBC News reported on Sunday that the White House is preparing two final public addresses for the president in the coming days. Both will focus on capping off four years of the Biden presidency; one will deal specifically with foreign policy, an area where the president struggled over four years to convince Americans that he was delivering the cool and careful stewardship which Democrats promised to put in place after Donald Trump spent four years in office and at one point openly used American foreign policy as a means of going after his political enemies.
The president will leave office this month having watched the Middle East descend into a staggeringly deadly conflict, with Israel’s siege of Gaza having killed tens of thousands directly as well as through disease and starvation. Eastern Europe, where Russia’s Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022 and continues to pressure other countries in the region, is in little better shape and now — thanks to the defeat of Democrats in the presidential election — faces the prospect of US military aid to Ukraine potentially coming to an end.
His final days in office have been filled with foreign trips and a medal ceremony last week wherein the nation’s highest civilian honor was given out to several icons of the Democratic political and donor class, including George Soros, Hillary Clinton, Jim Clyburn and Nancy Pelosi.
