Is Biden done?

You can listen to the Front on your smart speaker every morning to hear the latest episode. Just say play the news from the Australian. From the Australian, here's what's on the Front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Thursday, July fourth. An epidemic of diabetes threatens to send Australia's life expectancy rate into reverse. That's the finding of a Parliamentary Health Committee which has found seventy percent of adults in some communities have Type two diabetes. Religious groups, the Coalition and

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Their glorious democracy looks a little tatty with mounting speculation President Joe Biden will step aside to avoid handing the country back to Donald Trump.

More Democrats seem to be getting cold feet over President Biden's re election campaign after that disastrous quote.

A large and increasing group of House Democrats concerned about the President's candidacy.

As Biden's own team digs in.

He understand that he's not a young man, obviously he said this, but his focus is going to continue to deliver for the American people.

Cameron Stewart is the Australian's chief international correspondent. Cameron, for a long time in US politics, we've had people engaging in wishful thinking. Will this be the end of Donald Trump? Is this a turning point for this? All that campaign and now we're at a moment where a lot of people are talking about Joe Biden potentially pulling out of this presidential race after his disastrous debate performance. Is this more wishful thinking or is this real?

I think this is more than wishful thinking. I think this is really its spin points in American politics. In a way that we haven't seen before. There was such alarm within Democrat ranks about Joe Biden's performance that some people are now coming out publicly Democrat congressmen and calling

Bock popular that they watched something.

Different, and so it's far more than just a politics as usual it was a bad week kind of attitude, which is what Joe Biden's camp is really saying. The heavy hitters in the Democratic Party, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama have come out publicly and backed Joe Biden. Nancy Pelosi has been a little less enthusiastic, but nevertheless has still backed him.

He has a bad name now again, I think it's a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or is this a condition?

And you'd expect that, And of course the White House team is saying, look at which is a bad day. He had jet lag, he had a cold. Depending on what Dad is, they've got a different excuse. But the bottom line, Claire, is that fifty million Americans saw this performance, and any Australians who saw it would see with their own eyes how much of a decline Joe Biden has suffered over the past four years.

Excuse me with dealing with you have to do with what if we finally beat medicare? Thank you President Biden, President Trump, Well, he's ready.

He did beat medicare.

He beat it to death. And I think this is really a very serious issue. I don't think it is something that would just come and go. I think the Democratic Party are really seriously considering whether Joe Biden will step up and be the contender or whether he should step aside.

There was a lot.

Of criticism that Joe Biden was too old when he first ran for the presidency in twenty twenty, cam but when you look back at the twenty twenty debates that he had with Donald Trump, this is the.

Guy who's tried to cut Medicare. So I don't I mean the idea that Donald Trump is luxuring me on Social Security and Medicare. Come on, he tried to get rid of he tried to hurt social Security.

He seemed like a fairly robust, quite normal, chatty seventy seven year old, a year younger, incidentally than Donald Trump is. Now, what do you think about that? Did that make a mistake in choosing him in the first place? Was he too old back in twenty twenty.

No, I definitely don't think he was. He was, as you said, much more robust performance. He has declined very much in office, as some people simply do it. At that age, he was the perfect candidate almost for Donald Trump, because Trump, of course, he's famously erratic and volatile, and he'd had a very volatile presidency, and Americans were just looking for someone calm, experienced and boring, even really, and

There has never been a president who's stood aside or resigned because of illness, But there have been presidents who've had serious things happened to them and serious disabilities that they've lived with while in office. Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic president in the nineteen teens, suffered a stroke while in

Really.

Joe Biden understandably is a very proud man. It's not really like him to step aside, so I think it would be a massive decision on his part to do so. Firstly, Secondly, think of the timing here. We've only got four months to the presidential election. I don't think any president has stood aside so close to an actual election, and it's for aging the slash mental health reasons that he would be stepping aside again, we haven't seen that again in

So what happens if that is the case. Does it fall to Kamala Harris?

That's a great question. The general consensus thinking would be that Joe Biden would effectively say I'm not running again, and he'd throw the field open. What he would do is release the convention candidates who are supposed to vote for him at the party's convention in August, and there would be an open contest between whoever wanted to contest the ballot. But that may not be the case. He may, for example, say I'm stepping aside, but I put my

What's your take on Kamala Harris. She's widely mocked from the right of politics, and here she is rewriting the history about this is her being an empowered woman.

Don't ever carry as a personal burden your capacity to do whatever you dream and aspire to do based on other people's limited ability to see who can do what.

She kind of seems to tick quite a lot of woke boxes. She is much of a daughter as she's made out to be.

Look, that's a good question. I think she's got some really unfair press as vice president because vice presidents don't really do much. They never really particularly good or particularly bad. Frankly, it's very hard to define their role. However, we should remember that Karmala Harris was a very poor campaigner in twenty twenty.

I'm not a billionaire. I can't fund my own campaign, and as the campaign has gone on, it has become harder and harder to raise the money we need to compete.

The other thing about Kamala Harris is while she is very accomplished, she's not a popular person in the Midwest and the key states in the Midwest. The big city Democrats in America love Carmelo because she's a woman of color, very highly achieved, a prosecutor, et cetera, et cetera. They're the reasons that people in the Midwest a lot of voters don't particularly like her.

So if not Karmala, then who.

There were two standards. Gavin News from the governor of California. He's very popular in California. He's a rather, he's straight from Central casting with straight white teeth. He's the old style candidate. If you like you, don't turn your back.

You go home with the one that brought you to the dance.

One hundred percent all in.

I think the Democrats would have a bit of a problem given their ethos, to be replacing a woman of color with a white male from the same state. I think that would be a tricky one for them to argue. The other one is Gretchen Whitmer, who is the governor of Michigan. She's a really tough cookie.

None of what she just said is true, and here's why you can't trust anything she's saying when it comes to reproductive rates.

She's stood up against a lot of the Trump extremists, if you like. In her stage, she's under a kidnap plot at one stage. She's very popular in Michigan, which of course is a key swing state. She might be quite a good contender. The person when I was traveling through the Bibs covering the election last time who impressed me the most was Pete Bodhajedge, who is the Transport Minister.

Joe Biden's presidency has been among the most productive and successful in American history.

I think he would be on candidate as well. The issue for him might be he is gay and will be American electorate, especially African Americans, be okay with that.

You were in the United States as I correspondent for the rise and then the fall, even if it's not a permanent fall of Donald Trump in twenty twenty. What's your sense in your waters now? Cam do you feel like the momentum is on for Trump? He seems like a much more disciplined performer. Certainly judging by that last debate.

Now well, that was one of Trump's best performances because he didn't lose his temper, he didn't rant and rave, he kept himself quite composed. The question for Donald Trump is can he win the middle ground that he lost in twenty twenty and again in those midterms as well.

Coming up is Donald Trump on a winning streak. There's a UK election in the offing too, with voters likely to sweep the Tories from power. We'll have all the latest live night and day at the Australian dot com dot au and we'll be back in just a moment, Cameron. Donald Trump's had two significant wins in the past two days. One is that He's sentencing over his conviction for hush

Well, they're both good news for Donald Trump. And the sentencing for his hush money trial is good and bad in the sense that it's a relief for him that he won't potentially be jailed for the actual Republican convention, which is only in about two weeks time, and the sensing was going to happen about four days before that actual convention. That's been late or September. But then, of course that does mean that's quite close to the election, so there is a potential for that to backfire. The

Karen Stewart is The Australian's chief international correspondent. If Joe Biden does throw in the towel, the Australian subscribers will be the first to know. Join us at the Australian dot com dot a yu