President Joe Biden’s apology for calling Georgia nursing student Laken Riley’s alleged murderer an “illegal” illustrated two major dilemmas for his reelection campaign.
The most obvious is that worrying about the correct terminology for describing someone believed to have murdered a U.S. citizen itself exemplifies Biden’s timorous and largely disastrous approach to the border.
But it also revealed the degree to which it is going to be difficult for Biden to bridge the generation gap within the Democratic Party, despite a lifetime of chasing its center of gravity.
Biden has, at times, been able to use his senior status to provide a form of adult supervision of the Democrats’ squabbling electoral coalition. The Laken Riley incident suggests the balance of power is shifting. Biden may soon have as much control over his party as he does the border.
