When Barbara Boxer arrived in the United States Senate, her image as a passionate liberal from Marin County (land of crystals, hot tubs and aging hippies) preceded her.
It was nothing good
“I was said to be a very militant feminist and the boys were scared to death,” Boxer recalled.
The colleague who paved the way for him —“He’s a good guy,” he assured the Old Bulls— was Joe Biden, who in 1993 was already beginning his second decade on Capitol Hill.
The two became close, both personally and politically.
“We really came together on protecting dolphins and protecting women,” Boxer said of her legislative work (regulating purse seine nets, cracking down on domestic violence), which had begun in the 1980s when she was in the House of Representatives.
Boxer supported Biden when he ran for president in 1988 and again in 2020, notably passing over the Democrat who replaced her in the Senate, Kamala Harris.
Given all this, Boxer sat speechless as she and her family members watched Biden sputter and stammer his way through his disastrous debate performance last week. “This wasn’t the Joe we knew,” she said. “Something wasn’t right.”
Instantly, what had been persistent, low-level nervousness among Democrats turned into full-blown partisan panic. A small but growing chorus has called for the 81-year-old incumbent to drop out of the presidential race — before it’s too late and he drags his party down with him. (Many more are expressing that sentiment privately.)
Boxer isn't there. At least not yet.
Two weeks, he said. Let's give Biden two weeks to prove that his zombified appearance in Atlanta was an anomaly.
“The man has done it, time and time again,” Boxer said this week in a conversation from his home in Palm Springs. “Every time he’s been counted out, he’s come back. Can he do it one more time? I don’t know the answer. But out of respect and admiration for what he’s done, let’s give him the time to do it.”
“And if he can't, he can't,” Boxer said, “and there will be someone else.”
That's not exactly a “hold on until the last dog is dead” type of recommendation.
But this is not about throwing a seriously wounded Biden to the wolves either.
When the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein was in the throes of her widely publicized physical and mental decline, there were widespread calls for her to step down and make way for someone younger, more vigorous and sharper. Boxer, who made history with Feinstein when the two were elected to the Senate together, offered a gentle nudge. There is life — and a good one — after leaving the Senate, she advised her former colleague in a 2021 interview.
But Boxer never openly pressured Feinstein, as many others did. Her fellow Democrat died in September at age 90, hours after casting her final vote on the Senate floor.
The situation with Biden is different, Boxer said.
“We don't know what happened to Joe,” she said, still baffled nearly a week later.
She speculated. Maybe his lifelong stutter manifested itself under the studio lights? Maybe Biden was suffering from a terrible cold or from some cold medication he had taken?
“I think the president owes the country an explanation,” Boxer said. More importantly, he added, he needs to prove to voters that he can not only take on Donald Trump, but that he can beat him in November.
“He has to go out without a script, without a teleprompter and simply face the press, the public,” he said. “That is fundamental.”
Biden has made a few public appearances, including a relatively lively performance at a rally in North Carolina the day after the debate. He spoke to reporters after the Supreme Court’s decision to grant presidents near-total immunity, and again while discussing the country’s stifling climate at an emergency operations center in Washington.
But Biden worked from a teleprompter and refused to take questions from reporters.
The president’s first appearance without a net is an interview scheduled for Friday with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. The stakes are high. Another faltering performance could prompt a wave of calls from Democrats for Biden to step aside.
Meanwhile, polls taken after Thursday night's debate show Biden losing ground to Trump and voters expressing increased concern about the president's mental and cognitive health.
Like many people, Boxer speaks of a Trump restoration in apocalyptic terms.
“This race is like no other,” he said. “We have to stop a man who says he is going to be a ‘dictator from day one,’ who wants to jail his opponents… This is getting worse every day.”
He praised Biden’s record over the past three and a half years — his record on job creation, his fight against climate change and his quest to lower the cost of prescription drugs. But all of that is in the past and none of it seems to matter much to voters, who, in the present, worry and wonder a lot about Biden’s abilities in the future.
Democrats are nervous, Boxer said. “I’m nervous. I’m very nervous.”
But she is still willing to give Biden one more chance to return to politics. Two weeks, she said. “Because in August we have the convention, and if there is going to be an open convention, there has to be time for people to decide who they are going to support.”
That’s a far cry from a “Biden or nothing” question. It shows that even the best of friends and biggest admirers have limits to their hope and patience with a president whose mental and physical capacities appear to be on the verge of collapse.
But there is no room for sentimentality when so much is at stake.
