By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
McALLEN, Texas |...Any day now. That's the word in the streets and hallowed hallways of Congress. President Joe Biden's expected exit from the 2024 presidential election is in the works. Pointed, unguarded nudges have come steadily over the last few days, from national polls to Democratic Party leaders.
Recent gains by Republican aspirant Donald J. Trump have not helped 81-year-old Biden.
Age apparently matters.
Editorials in America's largest, most influential newspapers have led the drumbeat, that and a rain of get-gone commentary on television talk shows. Joe Biden has seen and heard the bad news come calling.
An editorial in The New York Times painted Biden as being "the shadow of a great public servant" who "struggled to make it to the end of a sentence." He's been disappointing and confused., they wrote.
In The Los Angeles Times, a columnist described him as "a tongue-tied octogenarian."
That writer noted Biden "ended one tangled explanation of his tax proposals with the puzzling phrase: " 'we finally beat Medicare.' " Biden was "dismal" at the first debate. "Stunning," he added for killing effect.
What followed was a news media that had old age its focus.
Biden’s closest allies called on him to step aside.
That, we are led to believe by the most recent journalism, could be any moment/day now. It is a behind-the-scenes push currently underway supposedly led by former President Barack Obama and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, along with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has had Biden in a political lurch - to fight it to the end or to relent.
Three and a half months remain in this campaign, and yes, much can happen between now and Election Day on November 5th, but there is the reality of where Biden's troubled campaign could possibly go to keep him in the race.
He is battling an equally old man in 78-year-old Trump, but the optics of the two men on the campaign trail could not be much more different.
Trump, meanwhile, has fended off some nagging legal blows, seen the Supreme Court hand him surprising victories and even survived an assassination attempt. Biden's window has shown nothing of the sort, merely that of an old dude being asked repeatedly to step aside for the good of the party and allow for a fairer fight at the polls.
The obvious, we say, is coming...
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