Spectre of one-term presidency haunts the White House

To many observers, Biden appears to be at a moment of profound crisis in his presidency: and one he is struggling to address.

- Lauren Gambino

At an Independence Day barbecue, crises swirling around him, Joe Biden declared that he had "never been more optimistic about America than I am today". Of course there were challenges, grave ones, the US president told the military families assembled at the White House. But he gave a hopeful speech that reflected his often unshakeable faith in the American experiment on the 246th anniversary of its founding. Yet many Americans, even his own supporters, no longer share the president's confidence.

To many observers, Biden appears to be at a moment of profound crisis in his presidency: and one he is struggling to address. The spectre of Jimmy Carter - a one-term Democrat whose failure to win the 1980 election ushered in the Ronald Reagan era - is starting to haunt the Biden White House.

With decades-high inflation, near-weekly mass shootings, alarming disclosures about Donald Trump's attempts to overturn his election defeat and successive supreme court rulings that shifted the political landscape sharply rightward, Biden's upbeat speech struck even his fellow Democrats as ill-suited for what they view as a moment of existential peril for the country.