AA Edit | Biden dilemma for Democrats

The race to the White House is quite unlike the proverbial one between the hare and the tortoise. This contest between two candidates aged 82 and 78 seeking a second term has all the contours of a spoon and lime race between grandparents at a school fete.

It was supposed to be a close-run race between two occupants of the White House — incumbent Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump, that is until the great American reality show of a presidential debate came along, up to which point Mr Biden had reasons to be optimistic of holding off the maverick former president.

Mr Biden’s halting show in the televised debate, charitably described as a fiasco, has put the Democrats on the horns of a dilemma. Do they now ask their candidate to step down so they may choose a more dynamic leader and speaker who can relate to the young and the uncommitted voters whose votes may ultimately swing the polls?

Sticking to his powerful seat like a limpet to a rock, Mr Biden is unwilling to even contemplate giving up on the race to The Oval office, even as his family urges him on to look beyond the ‘blip on the campaign radar’, which is what the President’s faithful are calling his disastrous debate performance.

It is not as if the challenger Mr Trump came away smelling of roses from the debate even if he carried off his regular bluster in a stronger voice, but laced with the usual dose of innuendo, fake facts and delusions. But that is the crux of the debate now — do the Americans choose a President who was incomprehensible and shows the signs of aging visibly or another who might not accept the verdict even were he to be beaten fair and square at the very polls in which he is a candidate?

And yet, for all the fuss that the American people and media make of the debate and their possible effect on the poll outcome, the real tiebreakers are the voters of the 7 swing states who usually decide whether a Democrat or a Republican goes to the White House.