Washington (AFP)

Known for his "gaffes" for a long time, the favorite of the Democratic primary Joe Biden has multiplied this summer the slippages of language that fuel the doubt on the ability of the septuagenarian to hold the road to a long election campaign for the White House.

"I'm not going crazy!", Joked last week's former 76-year-old vice-president Barack Obama with the laughter, apparently complicit, of a group of voters.

Problem: his good-natured statement has been widely used by all those who point to the many erroneous statements that have enamelled his election campaign summer.

A tough Washington Post article claims on Thursday that it has mixed several anecdotes to salute the bravery of a soldier.

Joe Biden swept this article - "what I said was absolutely correct" - in an interview with Post and Courier, before dismissing concerns on his blundering side: "That's ridiculous".

However, his repeated missteps are of concern to some Democrats for whom the top priority is to choose "the" candidate who can beat Republican President Donald Trump in 2020.

They fear that with his blunders, added to the doubts about his fitness, the favorite among the Democrats does not open the flank to fierce attacks of the president, who nicknamed him "Joe the asleep" and questioned his health mental.

Especially since the summer of Joe Biden was particularly full of statements ... surprising.

Just after the murderous shootings of El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio (31 dead in total), early August, he had lamented the "tragic events in Houston," also in Texas , "and also in Michigan," an entirely different state ... before rectifying.

Shortly after, he again spoke of him by saying that "poor children are as intelligent and talented as white children". There too, he quickly recovered - "that rich children" - but the phrase has circulated widely.

And at the same time, he thundered in a loud voice, "We choose the truth rather than the facts," confused in his usual phrase intended to criticize Donald Trump: "We choose the truth rather than The fiction".

The blundering reputation of this veteran of politics is not new.

In 2007, he notably hailed in Barack Obama the first black candidate "intelligent, clean, who expresses himself well".

On a more sensitive level, he was also denounced in 2019 by several women for his gestures of affection deemed too marked.

- "Bugger", better than a "liar" Trump -

"One of the complicated things for Biden's campaign team is that the idea is now that he's a regular goofball guy and he's too old," says Robert Boatright, a professor at Biden's. Clark University.

He knows that "every time he goes wrong, we will try to put that in the context of this story, while other candidates can make mistakes without anyone noticing."

Well known and still widely popular among Democrats, Joe Biden follows a lighter agenda on the field of the campaign than some rivals who have yet to make a name.

But this fuels the image of a candidate who is more tired than the contenders of comparably more active ages. Second in the race for the Democratic nomination, Bernie Sanders is 77 years old, and Elizabeth Warren, third, 70 years old ... In front, Donald Trump is 73 years old.

On the ground in any case, the voters seem to remain faithful to him, forgiving these slippages to a candidate they deem sympathetic and genuine, and accusing the media to swell the polemics.

"All voters questioned about his blunders in this article talk about how @JoeBiden is true, heart, and understands," said his director of communication Kate Bedingfield Friday retweeting an article to this effect.

Joe Biden himself, in 2018, had recognized his propensity to skid, but at the same time tapped Donald Trump: "I may be a machine gaffes, but my God, what a wonderful thing compared to a man who can not not tell the truth ".

© 2019 AFP