Biden Leaves. For Now, for Self-Isolation

US President Joe Biden tested positive for Covid-19 yesterday, derailing a key campaign event designed to win the support of Latino voters at a critical time in the election.

Biden, 81, had mild symptoms and received his first dose of the antiviral drug Paxlovid, his doctor said. “I feel good,” Biden told reporters Wednesday in Las Vegas, giving a thumbs-up before boarding Air Force One for his Rehoboth, Delaware, residence. The President will self-isolate there in accordance with CDC guidelines.

He was scheduled to speak at the annual conference of UnidosUS, the largest Latino human rights NGO in the United States. Biden’s speech was intended to be a showcase of his energy and an example of direct engagement with a broad coalition of voters.

But everything did not go according to plan: first, conference participants waited an hour and a half for Biden to appear on stage, and then UnidosUS Executive Director Janet Murguia announced that she had just spoken on the phone with the president, and that he had tested positive for the coronavirus.

It is unclear where or when the president contracted Covid-19, but the sudden diagnosis will keep him behind closed doors at a time when Democratic lawmakers are demanding he step outside. During the critical period of the election campaign for the White House and Biden personally, the 81-year-old president will remain in self-isolation indefinitely and communicate via video conference.

All this is happening amid growing pressure from the Democratic Party establishment, which is clearly aiming to replace Biden with Kamala Harris. Just hours before the White House announced the president’s illness, California Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, publicly called on the president to drop out of the race.

Schiff is a frontman for very influential forces on Capitol Hill, with whom, according to a senior Democratic Party adviser who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity, there are ongoing “private conversations” about political reshuffling.

The adviser believes that in these private conversations Biden is not nearly as categorical as in public. “He went from ‘Kamala can’t win’ to ‘Do you think Kamala can win?’ “— said the adviser. “It is not yet clear where he will land, but it seems that he is listening.” It is possible that the coronavirus, picked up at the wrong time (or vice versa?) by the US President, will become the very straw that breaks the camel’s back. And then, even before the Democratic Party convention in Chicago in August, we will see a new candidate for the presidency of the United States. It will almost certainly be Kamala Harris. The intrigue is who she will name as her vice.