After disastrous debate, Joe Biden can’t beat Donald Trump but there is a woman who can

In the late autumn of 2008, just days before Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, I spent an early Friday evening as a steward at a Joe Biden gig. The school hall in rural Pennsylvania was filled with excited Obama supporters, clutching Hope and Change placards, and chanting the campaign’s slogan “Fired Up”.

So far, so predictable. I had witnessed Obama-fever every day during the six weeks I had been volunteering in the campaign’s Bethlehem field office, and as election day approached, the excitement was reaching fever pitch, but this was first time I had seen Biden fans up close.

Clustered round the low-rise stage were scores of young, blue-collar men. Mostly white, all union men, and all very excited that they were soon going to be in the presence of Biden. I was surprised at their fervour. The campaign team I worked on was run by young middle-class liberals, many from out of state. To them, Biden was a relic of America’s industrial past – similar to the giant steel plant in south Bethlehem. It once produced the steel that built 20th century America, and was now a casino and arts complex.

Biden was an avuncular figure, a Washington insider, but he was already yesterday’s man. Obama was the future. But not to the young men waiting for Uncle Joe. Biden was their hero. A man of the people. And he did not let them down. He gave a tub-thumping, old-fashioned stump speech, evoking a mythical United States of America where working class men and women were the bedrock of the world’s greatest economy. And would be again, under an Obama-Biden administration. The crowd loved it. I loved it. We were fired up, ready to go.

A much more dangerous world

In the early hours of this morning, I watched with tears in my eyes as a confused old man stumbled his way through the most important public appearance of his life. Perhaps the most important public appearance of all our lives, because if Donald Trump, a self-confessed fan of Vladimir Putin, wins the presidential election on November 5, the world will immediately become a much more dangerous place.

The spectacle of a deathly white Biden, his voice so hoarse as to be almost inaudible at times, stumbling to craft a coherent sentence will remain with me forever. It was like spending an hour or so with a much-loved grandparent, someone who was once the vital heart of the family, but now sits dazed and confused in the corner of every family gathering while life goes on around about them. Trump may be only three years younger than his rival, but at 78, he is a young-old man. Biden is just too old.

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Will he stand down in time to allow the Democrats to choose another presidential candidate? He should. Even if he was to win in November – and the polls suggest he will struggle to beat Trump – he is clearly not fit to be President for another four years. He will be 82 only two weeks after the election. His body, if not his mind, is clearly worn out. He is simply not fit to be leader of the free world. But who is?

Harris would struggle

Kamala Harris, his vice president, is the obvious choice, and if she won she would be America’s first female President, but she has failed to shine as Joe’s number two. A staunch advocate for a woman’s right to choose, she has led the campaign against the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade, which, according to most commentators, is the issue that has galvanised more voters, particularly women, in states run by Republicans.

Speaking in Wisconsin at the start of a national tour to mark the 51st anniversary of Roe v Wade, she stood next to a banner that screamed “TRUST WOMEN”. “These extremists want to roll back the clock to a time before women were treated as full citizens,” she said. But the polls consistently show that America, even Democrat America, does not trust this particular woman.

There is another female politician, however, who is arguably a more suitable heir to Biden, and given enough time could be a formidable challenger to Trump.

During a six-month road trip across America in 2018, when I ended up back in Bethlehem for a third election campaign – this time the mid-terms during Trump’s first administration – we drove the length of Michigan. The state is the ancestral home of America’s car industry. It also had the worst roads of any of the 35 states we spent time in.

Fix the country, save the world

One woman had had enough. Democrat Gretchen Whitmer stood for state governor on the slogan of “fix the damn roads” and stormed to victory. She was comfortably re-elected in 2022, and at 52, with six years’ experience of running a big, post-industrial state, she is surely a major contender for the top job. And Trump fears her so much that he can barely bring himself to use her name, referring to her as “that woman from Michigan”.

In a recent New York Times interview, Whitmer, who is co-chair of Biden’s re-election campaign, argued that the 2028 presidential election will be when the keys to the White House are passed to the next generation. She said: “…I’m hopeful that in 2028, we see Gen Xers running for the White House and that someone from my generation is ready to take the mantle.”

After Thursday night’s heart-breaking performance by Biden, the Democrats, America, indeed the world, must be hoping that someone from Whitmer’s generation is ready to take the mantle now, because in four years’ time. it might well be too late. Surely it is time for Gretchen Whitmer to “fix the damn country”, and save the world.