IT’S STILL CLOSE. In recent weeks, especially since the presidential debate, a number of Republicans and media observers have declared that former President Donald Trump is the solid favorite to win the election. You know who is skeptical about those declarations? Donald Trump. The former president knows the race is still close in several key states and — he knows this better than anyone — that Democrats have gone to, and will go to, extraordinary lengths to stop him. So he is a little bit superstitious about any confident predictions of a Trump victory.

And indeed, the race is quite close. In the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, Trump is leading President Joe Biden by 2.9 percentage points, 47.4% to 44.5%. Trump’s lead is actually down a little from the 3.4-point advantage he had on July 7. That could indicate that Biden has bottomed out of his post-debate tailspin and is now stabilized or even rising in the polls.

Biden also managed to get through his much-watched news conference Thursday night. Yes, he had two cringe-making bloopers: one, before the news conference, when he referred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin,” and two, during the presser, when he referred to his own vice president, Kamala Harris, as “Vice President Trump.” Both were embarrassing, but in context, they were the kind of absent-minded references people make all the time — not the alarming freezes, vacant stares, confusion, and loss of touch with reality that Biden showed during the debate, the Hollywood fundraiser, the Juneteenth concert, and elsewhere. 

Before the news conference, there were reports that a large group of House Democrats planned to call for Biden to withdraw from the race. But after the news conference, it appeared that most of them decided not to go forward, although three went ahead. Now, a total of 18 House Democrats have called for Biden to quit. One Democrat told Politico Playbook that Biden did just well enough to quiet calls for his immediate exit, leaving anti-Biden Democrats “in purgatory.” 

If Biden’s adversaries are in purgatory, then Biden is winning — for the moment. Another indicator of Biden’s progress is the continued support from black voters. On CNN, the African American political strategist Ashley Allison, a veteran of the Obama and Biden campaigns, made an impassioned case for Biden over Trump and said black voters are ready to move on from an intensive focus on Biden’s debate performance. Later, Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the New York Times’s “1619 Project,” posted a video of Allison’s statement with the comment, “This is what I am hearing from so many black Americans and especially black women who feel 1) That their vote, decisions and concerns are being undermined by non-black people in the Democratic Party. 2) That too many people reporting and commenting do not seem to understand the stakes. 3) That perhaps the polling is reflecting a Democratic Party that is attacking its own candidate rather than the opposing one.”

On Friday, Biden scheduled a visit to Detroit to shore up black Democratic support. Meanwhile, some of Biden’s supporters are pointing to those calling for Biden to withdraw from the race and noting that many are “elites,” by which they mean white elites. “These are the folks calling for Biden to quit,” posted the Democratic commentator Tristan Snell, including pictures of George Clooney, Stephen Colbert, Rob Reiner, Michael Moore, the Pod Save America crew of Obama alumni, and others. “Gosh,” added Snell, “if there was only something they all had in common.”

So it’s fair to say that Democrats are deeply divided about Biden — which is probably good news for Biden because on debate night it seemed as if the whole party would unite and stampede the White House. But Biden’s progress is very likely short-lived. Any advances he makes are only good until the next senior moment he has, especially if it is a serious moment like the debate, the Hollywood fundraiser, or the Juneteenth concert. At that point, Biden and the party will be back to where they were on debate night, and when that happens, Democrats might overcome their divisions to get rid of the aged president.