The coverage of the “dueling midterm speeches” of President Trump and former President Barack Obama made me wonder about another former president who, as far as I can tell, has not done any rally or appearance for any Democratic candidate this autumn: former President Joe Biden.
On September 11, Joe and Jill Biden attended the 25th anniversary ceremony at Ground Zero alongside the other living former presidents and Vice President Vance.
That was Biden’s first appearance since June 27, when he spoke at the Maryland Democratic Party gala. Earlier in the month, he made an appearance at the Obama Presidential Center dedication in Chicago:
For reasons that aren’t clear, the 83-year-old went over to the podium and took off his sunglasses before staring into the crowd with a puzzled look on his face.
“Where’s my granddaughter?” he shouted.
The former president then seemingly started to make his way off-stage before footage of the event cut off.
Biden also spoke at the South Dakota Democratic Party’s annual McGovern Day dinner June 5, made a brief appearance at his wife’s book event in New York June 3, attended his portrait unveiling at Syracuse University April 14, and spoke at a South Carolina Democratic Party reception Feb 27.
By my count, that is seven public appearances in about ten months, and about half involved planned public remarks.
No doubt, Biden’s extremely limited public appearances reflect the fact that he continues to battle advanced, metastatic prostate cancer, and every American wishes Biden the best in his fight against cancer. In September, Biden posted a message on his social media accounts that “the radiation treatment from last fall worked as intended, and I continue to do the things I care about, like finishing my memoir.” That’s great to hear.
But it is another demonstration that had Biden remained the Democratic nominee in 2024 and somehow won a second term, he would never have been able to perform his duties of president. Entirely separate from the then-undetected prostate cancer within him, anyone with eyes and ears could see that the effects of age were seriously interfering with Biden’s ability to act like a normal president or keep up a normal president’s schedule. (The frequently invoked “jet lag” excuse for the debate performance referred to an overseas trip twelve days earlier.) In February 2024, 86 percent of respondents told the ABC News/Ipsos poll that Biden was too old to serve another four years.
The Biden family and most of the Democratic Party spent most of 2023 and the first half of 2024 insisting that Americans should not believe their lying eyes. I would argue this was a major factor in Trump’s victory in 2024; even though Biden was no longer the nominee, Americans knew Democrats had tried to convince them that two plus two equals five.
That also helps explain why Republicans appear to be on a path to a brutal midterm election. The Trump administration interpreted its 2024 victory as a turning point in American political history, and a resounding mandate to pursue everything that Donald Trump had ever wanted. But by March 2025, Trump’s disapproval numbers were higher than his approval numbers. The American electorate had not fallen in love with the MAGA agenda; they were just infuriated that the Democrats had tried to sneak Biden through for another term and weren’t impressed with Kamala Harris as the emergency substitute nominee.