Above all, Joe Biden’s allies wanted him to demonstrate strength and energy on the debate stage to help dispel doubts about the 81-year-old Democrat’s physical and mental acuity.
But on the biggest stage in American politics on Thursday night, Biden failed to live up to his modest expectations.
And at the end of the 90-minute showdown, the Democratic president’s allies — party strategists and rank-and-file voters alike — descended into complete panic after a debate marked by repeated stumbles, awkward pauses and a calm speaking style. that was often difficult to understand. Publicly and privately, Democrats questioned whether the party could or should replace him as the party’s presidential nominee against former Republican President Donald Trump, 78, this fall.
“I’m not the only one whose heart is broken right now. “There are a lot of people who watched this tonight and felt terribly for Joe Biden,” former Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill said on MSNBC. “I don’t know if things can be done to fix this.”
For now, the biggest question for Biden is whether the damage is permanent. Many voters have not yet tuned in to an election that is still more than four months away. The president and his allies have millions of dollars that have not yet been spent on advertising and state infrastructure. And there is precedent for bouncing back from difficult debate performances, including Barack Obama’s rebound from a lopsided encounter with Mitt Romney in 2012. Democrat John Fetterman defeated a Republican challenger in 2022 after struggling during a debate several months after suffering a stroke.
President Joe Biden, right, and Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump, left, participate in a presidential debate hosted by CNN, Thursday, June 27, 2024, in Atlanta.
AP Photo/Gerald Herbert
Biden’s 2024 re-election campaign was always built on the bet that voters would finally support an 81-year-old longtime politician with low approval ratings in a rematch that few Americans want. Despite such responsibilities, Biden’s team insisted that he was uniquely positioned to prevent Trump from returning to the White House, just as he did four years ago.
Biden’s winning political coalition has long been predicted to embrace the Democratic president after being sufficiently reminded of Trump’s chaotic leadership, but there was little sign of that confidence following Biden’s disappointing debate performance.
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“It was a slow start. That’s obvious to everyone. I’m not going to debate that point,” Vice President Kamala Harris said on CNN after the debate. “I’m talking about the election in November. I’m talking about one of the most important elections of our collective lifetime.”
Biden surrogates were slow to enter the post-debate spin room in Atlanta. And when they finally emerged, they largely avoided questions from the press. Instead, they criticized Trump’s long list of falsehoods during the debate. Among other things, Trump did not repudiate those who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential future presidential candidate who was Biden’s most prominent representative in the Atlanta newsroom, urged Democrats not to panic.
“I think it’s useless. And I think it’s unnecessary. We have to get in, we have to keep our heads up,” Newsom said in an interview on MSNBC. “We have to have the support of this president. You don’t back down from a performance. What kind of party does that?
Still, signs of anxiety were evident as Democrats began openly encouraging the party to find an alternative to Biden. Some party officials pointed to a social media post by former Obama campaign aide Ravi Gupta.
“Every Democrat I know is texting that this is bad,” Gupta wrote on X. “Just say it publicly and start the hard work of creating space at the convention for a selection process. “I will vote for a corpse over Trump, but this is a suicide mission.”
Under current Democratic Party rules, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to replace Biden as the party’s nominee without his cooperation or without party officials being willing to rewrite their rules at the national convention in August.
The president won an overwhelming majority of Democratic delegates during the state-by-state primary process. And party rules state that “delegates elected to the national convention who have pledged themselves to a presidential candidate shall conscientiously reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.”
But the DNC rules don’t have the same strict rules on “faithless delegates” that the RNC does, which ignore dissenting votes that violate a delegate’s pledged standing.
Meanwhile, Republicans were elated by Biden’s lackluster performance, but Trump’s campaign co-chairman dismissed rumors that Democrats would try to nominate someone other than Biden.
“There are so many political experts on “But the only way that’s going to happen is if Joe Biden voluntarily resigns, and he’s not going to do that.”
Thursday’s debate may be etched in voters’ minds for the foreseeable future, as Biden and Trump won’t meet again on the debate stage for another 75 days.
LaCavita said Trump would be at the next debate “with bells on.” Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Muñoz confirmed that Biden would also attend the rematch.
But privately, Biden’s advisers suggested the campaign would never be won or lost in a single rally, conversation or debate. They signaled plans to maintain an aggressive program in the coming weeks and months.
On Friday, Biden was scheduled to campaign in North Carolina, while Harris was in Nevada.
Still, Biden supporters struggled to find any hope in the immediate aftermath of the debate.
“That was the worst performance in the history of televised presidential debates,” Tim Miller, a former Republican strategist turned ardent Biden supporter, said in the spin room, shaking his head in disbelief.
Miller reported from Washington. AP writers Bill Barrow and Darlene Superville in Atlanta; Jill Colvin in New York and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed.
© 2024 The Canadian Press
