A defiant Joe Biden resisted calls to abandon his re-election effort and step aside for a younger candidate after his calamitous showing in Thursday’s presidential debate with Donald Trump.
As Democrats panicked and openly talked about replacing the president with another nominee, the Biden campaign unequivocally ruled out that possibility.
“Of course he’s not dropping out,” Lauren Hitt, a campaign spokesperson, said on Friday.
Her statement followed Biden’s own resolute comments to downcast supporters shortly after leaving the debate stage in Atlanta. “Let’s keep going,” he told them.
That stubbornly upbeat posture is expected to be maintained today as the president journeys to Raleigh, North Carolina, for a post-debate election rally in one of the key battleground states seen as vital to November’s election.
The positive facade, however, may be hard to maintain amid a public cacophony of breast-beating about a debate performance that appeared to reinforce widespread voter anxiety about the president’s advanced age and his physical and mental fitness to serve another four years in the White House.
Speaking in a raspy voice, Biden repeatedly mangled his policy statements as he became bogged down in detail and failed to score forcefully against Trump in areas where the Republican presumptive nominee is vulnerable: abortion, his criminal status as a convicted felon, and his role in the January 6 insurrection.
With Democrats close to open mutiny and rumbling about discontent among fundraisers, sections of the media normally sympathetic to Biden also turned on him. In the New York Times, Thomas Friedman – said to be one of the president’s favourite columnists – penned a piece with the headline: “Joe Biden is a good man and a good president. He must bow out of the race.”
In similar vein, a story in the Atlantic, which skews liberal, argued that Biden should step aside for the same reason that he gave for running against Trump in 2020: saving democracy.
“He says he ran because he saw the threat Donald Trump posed to the country and the threat he posed to democracy,” the article argued. “If Biden truly believes that, he needs to end his reelection campaign. Indeed, dropping out could be the most patriotic gesture of his long career in public service.”
Biden’s resistance to such entreaties may be bolstered by the public support he received from chief surrogates Kamala Harris, the vice-president, and Gavin Newsom, the governor of California – two figures who would be in the frontline of potential replacement candidates – in the immediate aftermath.
Acknowledging the obvious, Harris conceded that Biden had a “slow start” but insisted his finishing performance was “strong”.
“It was a slow start. That’s obvious to everyone. I’m not going to debate that point,” Harris told CNN. “I’m talking about the choice for November. I’m talking about one of the most important elections in our collective lifetime.”
Newsom, seen in some quarters as a future candidate, was even more unequivocal, telling CBS: “I will never turn my back on President Biden. I don’t know a Democrat in my party that would do so.”
Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, said on MSNBC on Friday: “Democrats, stop worrying and start working. We all have the responsibility here to do our part.
“Sitting here and hand-wringing – sitting here and fretting – is not the answer.”
Hilary Clinton also weighed in, insisting her support for Biden was strong. “The choice in this election remains very simple,” she wrote. “It’s a choice between someone who cares about you – your rights, your prospects, your future – versus someone who’s only in it for himself.
“I’ll be voting Biden.”
But such defiance may be undermined by a revolt among fundraisers.
One Democratic fundraiser who planned to attend a debate performance in the Hamptons on Saturday evening called Biden’s performance “a disaster”, CNBC reported.
“This is terrible. Worse than I thought was possible. Everyone I’m speaking with thinks Biden should drop out,” the network quoted the person as saying.
“Game over,” said a long-time Democratic adviser who worked with fundraisers to finance the party’s congressional campaigns and helped fundraise for Biden’s 2020 White House bid.
“Biden’s got to leave. He’s got to get out now and if he doesn’t get out we’re going to get … crushed.”
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