Biden visits Detroit facing hard questions about continuing his candidacy

In past visits to Michigan, President Joe Biden has driven a Ford truck, toured the auto show, licked an ice cream.

Friday's reelection rally in Detroit, however, will be far more fraught.

The 81-year-old president, dogged by doubts that he is too old and frail to do the job, will continue to face close scrutiny as he desperately tries to reinvigorate a campaign and ward off some calls in his party for him to abandon the Democratic nomination in the wake of a disastrous debate performance two weeks ago.

"This is to remove any doubts about his ability to govern, his ability to run," said U.S. Rep. Shri Thanedar, D-Detroit, who has voiced support for Biden to remain the nominee in the race against former President Donald Trump and expects to greet him on the tarmac when Air Force One lands at Detroit Metro Airport.

The question is whether any rally can really do that, given that from day to day the president's level of stamina and coherence appears to fluctuate, a condition that was on display at the first presidential debate in Atlanta on June 27 as Biden stammered and had a difficult time forming responses to questions. On Thursday evening, Biden was far more composed at an hour-long press conference following a three-day NATO summit in Washington, ably answering questions about foreign policy and touting his record. But he also opened with a gaffe in which he referred to Trump as his vice president instead of Kamala Harris and his voice was often raspy and hoarse. Earlier in the day he also introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as "President Putin" before correcting himself.

Friday afternoon's rally — in comparison to those held by Trump this year in Michigan, which are raucous, open events — appeared set to follow the more controlled script the Biden campaign has used in the state and elsewhere, with only invited guests able to attend and no information about its details made public beforehand. The fact that it was expected to involve several thousand people, however, did represent a change, given that the president has mostly spoken only to smaller, select crowds in the state since taking office.

It marks Biden's fourth campaign visit to the state this year.

Biden's campaign has clearly hoped to pivot away from the debate and questions about the candidate's age and health. He has held a series of swing state stops in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and elsewhere recently and attempted to turn the focus on Trump, linking him with Project 2025, a conservative plan to rewrite government from top to bottom which the former president says he hasn't endorsed, and excoriating him for appointing three Supreme Court justices that voted to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision protecting abortion rights two years ago. He has reminded voters of Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, with false claims of fraud in Michigan and elsewhere, and criminal cases brought against the former president.

Thanedar said it's one thing undergoing the normal challenges any 81-year-old might and "another thing not knowing right from wrong," which he said Trump, who is 78 and also often misspeaks, doesn't.

A strong rally in Detroit could certainly help the president regain some control of the campaign narrative and, for now, only a handful of Democrats have publicly called for him to relinquish the nomination. At Thursday night's press conference, he indicated his belief that he remains the most qualified candidate and in the best position to beat Trump, saying he might step aside if he believed that wasn't the case.

He said he would consider stepping down from the race to let Harris take his place if his staff told him there was no way he could win. "They're not saying that," he said.

But the questions about Biden's fitness for office aren't dying down as they seemed to just days ago.

On Thursday, U.S. Rep. Hillary Scholten, of Grand Rapids, representing a toss-up district in west Michigan, became the state's first Democratic member of Congress to call for Biden to step down as nominee to keep Trump from winning reelection in November. And while Biden has steadfastly refused to entertain any notion of his leaving the race so far, the drumbeat has continued: Politico reported House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, of New York, has said his leadership team would meet to "figure out the next step" in determining what, if anything, should happen next regarding Biden's nomination.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, speaking Wednesday on MSNBC, made an oblique reference suggesting that Biden could still decide otherwise, while making it clear she supported whatever decision he made. Actor George Clooney, who just last month hosted a fundraiser for Biden that took in $30 million, wrote this week in the New York Times that it's time for Biden to step down as the nominee. And Reuters reported, citing sources, that UAW leaders who had endorsed Biden were discussing concerns that he could lose to Trump in November.

On Thursday, the Cook Political Report, a respected political handicapping website in Washington, changed the rating for the race for Michigan's open U.S. Senate seat from Lean Democrat to toss-up, citing Biden's post-debate drag on down-ticket races. No Republican has won a Michigan U.S. Senate seat in 30 years.

Nationally, Trump has maintained a narrow lead in the polls. And in Michigan, a key swing state that will help determine the outcome of the election, most polls have shown Trump slightly ahead — a pre-debate poll by EPIC-MRA of Lansing showed Trump ahead by 4 percentage points in a head-to-head matchup with Biden — and there are nagging worries that Biden could see that gap widen, not close, in weeks to come.

"I think it’s going to be tough (to close the gap)," said EPIC-MRA pollster Bernie Porn. "His debate performance reinforced concerns about his age. That is something that has been a constant reason people have been reluctant to support him. ... It's going to be a challenge to come back."

And it's an inescapable problem for the president. For every strong showing — such as his forceful performance at a rally in North Carolina after the debate or his defense of remaining in the race in a call to MSNBC's "Morning Joe" this week — there seems to be a slip, such as when he suggested to ABC News host George Stephanopoulos he wasn't sure whether he had seen his own debate performance.

"I watched him on MSNBC, shaking hands with NATO members (in Washington this week)," said Porn, who thought the president appeared frail and stiff. "He just didn’t look to be himself."

Without question, Biden still has a hold on the nomination for as long as he chooses to keep it: There is no clearly defined mechanism through which he could be forced to give it up ahead of the nominating convention in August in Chicago. And the Biden campaign on Thursday was quick to note the level of support the president enjoys from top Democrats in the state.

Speaking on ABC's "The View," Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a co-chair of his national campaign, defended Biden, saying, "He is absolutely the same Joe Biden we all have known." U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Ann Arbor, who has known Biden and his wife, Jill, for decades, told CNN, "We need to be talking about Donald Trump and all the things that he's done. And how he wants to be a dictator, and how he thinks (overturning) Roe v. Wade is the greatest thing that he ever did. How he wants to give your billionaire friends a tax cut, and thinks Jan. 6 was a great thing.” Former Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Biden's energy secretary, said Thursday he should remain the nominee.

But there are others who have deeper questions. Scholten, for one, said she would respect the president's decision and vote for him if he were the nominee, but she feared Trump would beat him and "sow chaos and destruction," urging Biden to "pass the torch."

A longtime Michigan Democrat, who knows Biden personally, told the Free Press he or she perceived a change in Biden, having seen him at an event recently where the president seemed "washed out" and "not animated." This Democrat worries the president can't beat Trump in the fall. Speaking anonymously out of respect for the president, the Democrat said Vice President Kamala Harris "would be a stronger candidate in Michigan and have greater appeal."

The Democrat also said if Biden remains in the race and Trump beats him decisively, it could hurt the party's chances in down-ballot races everywhere, from the U.S. Senate and U.S. House to state legislative races.

And as much as Biden's campaign and his allies want Friday's rally in Detroit to focus on Trump and the choice this November, there are worries that the election has become less a question of Biden's performance in office — strong job growth, a growing economy, legislative achievements in passing infrastructure and health care measures — in comparison to Trump and more of a referendum on Biden's physical and mental health.

"This is a race no longer about protecting the future of democracy. It's now about Joe Biden's fitness for the presidency," said Michael Griffie, a lawyer, educator and Free Press contributing columnist who ran for Congress two years ago. "We cannot un-see what we saw on that debate stage in Atlanta. And that was a debate the Biden campaign asked for."

Biden, Griffie noted, has been a constant force of support for the Black community, for labor, but he doesn't see how the president can turn around the election in Michigan with less than four months to go.

"There is a widening enthusiasm gap," he said. "I don't see a path to that reversing."

Contact Todd Spangler: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter@tsspangler.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Biden visits Detroit facing hard questions about his candidacy