Columnist Joe Battenfeld believes Jill Biden is the "main obstacle" to "saving the Democrats" and allowing President Joe Biden to step down, according to the Boston Herald. The first lady is his "number one caretaker, adviser, and enabler," Battenfeld charged.
Many Democrats are beginning to worry about their 2024 prospects because of Joe Biden's apparent age-related cognitive problems. Battenfeld believes the only solution is to get him out of the way to let someone else run, but Jill Biden won't let him.
"Jill Biden is the one Democrats have to deal with – if she says to stay in the race, he’ll stay in. And right now, Jill is winning. She clearly likes being first lady and won’t give it up easily," Battenfeld said.
Last week, special counsel Robert Hur announced that he wouldn't seek charges in the classified documents case against Joe Biden. The rationale was that he'd play as a "sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory" to a jury, NBC News reported.
Jill Biden rushed to his defense. "Dr. Jill took the extraordinary step of putting out a statement attacking the special counsel’s report recommending the president face no charges for holding classified documents because he was too old and not mentally sharp enough to be convicted," Battenfeld wrote.
The first lady responded strongly to the claim that her husband couldn't remember when their son, Beau Biden, died. "Believe me, like anyone who has lost a child, Beau and his death never leave him," Jill Biden wrote in a fundraising email.
"I hope you can imagine how it felt to read that attack -- not just as Joe’s wife, but as Beau’s mother," she wrote. Jill Biden also claimed that her husband 81-year-old husband is still "doing more in an hour than most people do in a day."
.@FLOTUS (via campaign) weighs in on Hur report:
“I hope you can imagine how it felt to read that attack -- not just as Joe’s wife, but as Beau’s mother.”
“Joe is 81, that’s true, but he’s 81 doing more in an hour than most people do in a day.” pic.twitter.com/xw2Pk8qFxl
— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) February 11, 2024
However, her instinct to protect her husband is detrimental. Battenfeld pointed out that "Democrats may worry that Jill Biden is clearly overstepping her bounds by leading her husband’s defense at a time when the president should be facing reality and bowing out."
This latest attempt from Jill Biden to proper her husband up comes as an increasing number of "Democrats are abandoning ship and coming to the conclusion that Biden cannot beat Donald Trump." It's possible she's doing more harm than good keeping him in the race.
"In a new ABC News/Ipsos poll released Sunday a stunning 86% of Americans say Biden is too old to serve a second term," Battenfeld pointed out. He went on to quote New York Times columnists Maureen Dowd and Ross Douthat, who are urging her to let go.
"Jill Biden and his other advisers come up with ways to obscure signs of senescence – from shorter news conferences to almost zero print interviews to TV interviews mainly with fawning MSNBC anchors. But many Americans are quite concerned about the 81-year-old president’s crepuscular mien," Dowd wrote.
"It’s the elephant in the room – except that elephants never forget." For his part, Douthat said the president should step down and "invite the convention delegates to choose his replacement" at the Democratic National Convention in August.
Until Jill Biden accepts the reality of her husband's health, the Democratic Party is stuck with him as their only hope against Trump. It doesn't seem to matter to the first lady that she may ruin their hopes of retaining the White House in the process.
