The more people mock Joe Biden for his dire performance in the presidential debate, the more I have the urge to sympathise with him. We live in a society committed to rooting out “isms” wherever they may be, so why is ageism still a gladiatorial sport? Then again, the leader of the free world probably does need to have fewer catatonic moments than Biden appears to. Which is where his replacement comes in, a longed-for necessity if Donald Trump is to be kept out of the White House. Kamala Harris is a no-go. So who?

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer .

Enter Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan’s stalwart Democratic governor, alone in a sea of Midwestern Republicans who like trolling her for being a woman and for being, well, sane. More than sane: experienced, reasonable, sparky, and not senile. She’s a tough cookie, as you need to be to be to survive in American politics, especially as a woman (Trump referred to her merely as “the woman in Michigan”). Her sensible stay-at-home orders for the first four months of Covid garnered a kidnapping plot against her, death threats, legal cases, harassment and more. She wasn’t cowed.

Whitmer is sensible on most topics, from the environment (keen on supporting renewables in America’s oil-guzzling motor industry heartlands), to childcare, to gun control and the biggie for me: abortion. She vowed to “fix the damn roads” in her home state, and actually did it. She focusses on infrastructure and she improves it, rather than relying on geopolitical and cultural alignments to win fans.

I think of her as a Democratic Nikki Haley with pizzazz and probably more intelligence, a good egg though Haley is. Sometimes it takes a woman, and a middle-aged woman, to fix a problem. And America has a huge problem: perhaps the biggest it’s ever faced. It’s time to bring in the cavalry, the kind with good cheekbones and luscious brown locks.

Meghan McCain: Biden won’t be elected to a second term ‘one way or another’

Meghan McCain, the daughter of the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), said President Biden will not be elected to another term “one way or another.”

“Joe Biden can step aside for another candidate or lose in historic numbers in a few months — but one way or another he will not be President soon and this is something his family should start coming to terms with since they all seem to be living in a severe level of delusion,” McCain said in a post on social platform X Friday.

McCain’s words come after a week of tension among Democrats in the aftermath of ashaky debate performance last Thursday. Biden sounded raspy and stumbled over his words during the CNN debate, which set off questions among Democrats as to whether he should remain the party’s candidate.

The White House was insistent earlier this week that Biden is not leaving the presidential race, and Biden said in a fundraising email sent Wednesday that nobody “is pushing” him “out.”

“I’m the Democratic Party’s nominee,” the fundraising email read. “No one is pushing me out. I’m not leaving, I’m in this race to the end, and WE are going to win this election. If that’s all you need to hear, pitch in a few bucks to help [Vice President Harris] and me defeat Donald Trump in November.”

In another post on X early Saturday morning, McCain said that “hysterical Biden defenders are exactly the same as the hysterical Trump defenders and frankly this cult worship of our presidents is really scary and exactly the opposite of what that position was intended to be when created by our founding fathers.

“These men aren’t kings,” McCain continued.

In an interview on ABC Friday, when it came to if he could be convinced to step out of the presidential race, Biden said “if the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get out of the race,’ I’d get out of the race. The Lord Almighty’s not comin’ down.”

Biden decision to continue re-election campaign may come within days, Hawaii governor says

Hawaii Gov. Josh Green, a Democrat, said Saturday that President Biden could make a decision within days on whether he stays in the presidential election race to seek a second term.

This comes after Green participated in a recent meeting with Biden and nearly two dozen fellow Democrat governors amid concerns about the president's re-election campaign, following the president's shaky debate performance last month against former President Donald Trump.

"I think the president stays in this race unless he feels that it is not winnable, or he feels that he has to hear other voices in his inner circle that he shouldn't run," Green, whose family has known the president for years, said in an interview with The Associated Press. "If the president felt that he wasn't up to it and truly not up to it, he would step down."

"We'll probably know in the next couple of days how the president feels about all this," he added.

Green said he believes Biden should be allowed to pick who should replace him on the ticket if he were to exit the race and that the president would likely designate Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement.

"I think it’s very clear that the Democratic Party would be ecstatic overall to have the president designate his vice president if it came to that," Green said.

Harris "is a powerful person, she is also a thought-leading woman, she’s an African American who was [California's] attorney general," Green said. "There are no credentials that are better than what the current vice president has."

Biden, 81, has repeatedly insisted over the past week and a half that he will remain in the race, including in an interview with ABC News that aired Friday night.

But concerns about the president's mental acuity have been raised, including by members of his party, since his debate performance. Some Democrats have called on Biden to leave the presidential race, while others in the party, particularly governors, have said they continue to support his re-election.

Green said his prediction for the president to make a decision within a few days takes into account expected pressure that could be placed on the president when congressional lawmakers return to Capitol Hill this week.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., is working to gather support from Democrat senators, aiming for a meeting on Monday, to discuss pressuring Biden to drop out of the presidential race. Additionally, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., is leading a virtual meeting with top Democrats on Sunday, with leaders expected to discuss the path forward for Biden's campaign.

"I really, honestly think that he has to make the decision," Green said. "And it should not come from another governor. It should not come from anyone but the closest, closest advisers to him and his own heart."

Green also highlighted that Trump, who is 78-years-old and the biggest threat to Biden's re-election, is only three years younger than Biden and that both will experience cognitive lapses going forward.

But, Green argued, temperament is more important than age in the presidential race.

"For God's sake, these two guys have to hold the nuclear codes. I don't want someone who tweets in the middle of the night and rages at other countries," Green said, referring to Trump. "That is not good. That's not the problem we have with President Biden."

Green, who was a physician before moving to the governor's mansion, said everyone has elderly parents or grandparents who experience pauses in their ability to express themselves clearly or other mental lapses, but that they are not pushed aside since they still possess great experience and wisdom and have a role in the family.

"That's why I’m standing by the president until he tells me otherwise," Green said.

Green also offered some insight into the meeting with Biden and other Democrat governors. Green said he asked Biden about his health, to which the president responded by saying everything was fine except for his brain.

The comment from Biden, which was previously made public, was made in jest, according to Green, who said that context was lost when leaked by other people.

"It was absolutely a joke, and in order to make a self-deprecating joke, you have to have intact cognitive function, period," Green said.

Green also pushed back on claims that advisers set up the meeting to have governors supportive of Biden speak first to quell any critics. The Hawaii governor said the reality was that the meeting featured a very candid, unscripted conversation with governors of differing perspectives.

"That call had just like you’d expect in a coffee shop, a few people mouthed off, a few people, you know, probably excessively praised the president, but almost everybody was just trying to see, ‘Are we OK?’" Green said.