The New Yorker:

The President’s family has defended him by invoking his past. But these arguments aren’t landing, since the case against his Presidency is that he isn’t even capable of leading as he could twelve months ago.

By Benjamin Wallace-Wells

Families have long memories. Longer than those of White House correspondents, or communications directors, or cable-news producers. Following Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance last week, as a loud chorus of pundits and donors—and a few elected Democrats—called for the President to end his reëlection campaign, Biden’s family members have emerged as his most important and perhaps final defenders, drawing on resentments and defenses that extend deep into the President’s personal history.

Speaking with the Times this week, a former adviser to First Lady Jill Biden, Michael LaRosa, focussed on the end of Joe Biden’s 1988 Presidential campaign, which Biden abandoned under pressure after it was revealed he had plagiarized a speech from Neil Kinnock, the leader of the U.K. Labour Party, about his personal experience of class inequities. “In 1987, she saw him be forced out by the press, pundits and polls, and it really was a scarring experience for both of them,” LaRosa said. “I think they learned from that experience and they weren’t going to have their hands forced like they were in 1987.”

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