CHICAGO — It was well past 11 p.m. on the East Coast by the time President Joe Biden took the stage Monday at Chicago’s United Center, where the Democratic Convention is taking place this week, to declare:
“Folks, let me ask you, are you ready to vote for freedom? Are you ready to vote for democracy and for America? Let me ask you, are you ready to elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz?”
It was a reminder that Joe Biden, 81, is still the president of the United States. In case you forgot.
In the third decade of the twenty-first century, we have become accustomed to powerful people erasing or tinkering with the past in the service of the present. To cite just a few examples:
The laptop that Biden and more than fifty former intelligence officials told us was Russian disinformation in 2020 is now key evidence for the prosecution in Hunter Biden’s upcoming tax evasion trial.
Biden suggested he’d be a one-term president when he was running for the White House in 2020, before he announced, in April 2023, that he’d run for reelection.
Democrats who fretted that Kamala Harris, who had a negative rating of nearly 54 percent in December 2023, would tank Biden’s reelection bid, now insist that she’s the second coming.
Now, in an even more surreal twist, we have been made to forget the present, to forget President Biden is still President Biden. He is being memory-holed in real time. Until last night, when, suddenly, there he was! Delivering a speech in front of the sprawling crowd of 50,000 delegates and honorary guests and journalists, engulfed by flashing lights and massive video screens.
He was useful to the campaign, of course—touting his record, passing the torch, all that. But really, it was a matter of protocol. It felt obligatory. How could the Democrats not include the sitting Democratic president in their convention?
“There’s so much more you can do, and you will do,” Delaware senator Chris Coons said, addressing the president directly. “Thank you, thank you.”
After First Lady Jill Biden and Biden’s daughter, Ashley, addressed the crowd, the president took to the podium. He looked good—energized, maybe a little emotional, surrounded by friends and supporters, all the whooping and hollering. It wasn’t enough to make one think he could keep it up for another four years—there was still the mumbling, the tangents—but he looked pretty sharp.
“Kamala and Tim will protect your freedom,” Biden said, referring to Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz. “They’ll protect your civil rights.”
“Character is destiny,” Biden added, preaching words of wisdom from the ancient Greeks. “For me and Jill, we know Kamala and Doug are people of character.”
Then he reached for even greater hyperbole: “Selecting Kamala,” he said, was “the best decision I made in my whole career”—which began in 1972.
He added: “We saved democracy in 2020, and now we must save it again in 2024.”
The partisans, the die-hard Democrats, the people who genuinely believe Donald Trump is a fascist—they were with him. At least, for the first half-hour or so. They wanted him to succeed. Then, toward the end of his 47-minute speech, he said he “was too young to be in the Senate. . . and too old to stay as president”—and the crowd laughed as though he’d meant it as a joke. But there was something sad about it. And something unnervingly true.
Lately, the president’s X channels have been blasting away about all the things he’s doing: meeting with an American recently released in the Russian prisoner swap, commemorating the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, fighting Big Pharma, and so on. But, peering beyond the veneer of his social-media feeds, he doesn’t appear to be doing much at all. So far this month, he’s visited six states and not left the country, and made three public remarks. His meetings have been starting around 10 in the morning and wrapping up by 4 p.m.—well within the working hours of the vast majority of Americans. In other words, when they aren’t paying attention.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainians are establishing a beachhead in Russia, the Middle East is on the precipice of a regional war, there remain many unanswered questions about the near assassination of Donald Trump—and the president of the United States has said almost nothing.
Shortly after he departed the stage late Monday, Biden was scheduled to fly to California for yet another vacation, in Santa Ynez, near Santa Barbara. Presumably, he will still have access to the nuclear football, and he will still have the power to introduce legislation and pardon criminals and make executive orders.
He apparently has big plans—“I’ve got five months left in my presidency, I’ve got a lot left to do”—but it’s unclear whether anyone is aware. Or if anyone is listening.
Peter Savodnik is a senior editor for The Free Press. Read his piece “John Fetterman Has No Regrets” and follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @petersavodnik.
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