WASHINGTON- Chairman Joe BidenHis aides and allies distributed talking points to Democrats, fielded calls from nervous donors and added new lines to the president’s speech Friday afternoon as part of an all-out effort to limit the damage from his weak debate performance the night before.
Biden’s raspy voice and restrained delivery have alarmed Democratic leaders, who hoped an energetic performance would ease lingering concerns that he is unequal to the demands of the presidency.
One ally, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, told NBC News that Biden “had a bad night. It’s hard to say otherwise.”
Murphy is hosting a fundraising event for Biden on Saturday and admitted he’s received some nervous calls from donors. Still, he said no one pulled out of the event and that Biden has proven he “knows how to get back up and dust himself off.”
The 90-minute debate debacle in Atlanta reflected a sense of anticipation that had been building among Democrats for months. Quietly, some strategists are now considering possible replacements at the top of the ticket should Biden drop out.
“The party must consider its options in terms of how we deal with our new circumstances after the debate. But we don’t have a lot of time,” Tom Daschle, a former Senate Democratic leader, told NBC News in an interview.
Biden’s actions created uncertainty within his own team as it dealt with the aftermath, which continued until Friday evening when The New York Times editorial board called on him to drop out of the race. After the debate, Biden’s campaign aides discussed whether Vice President Kamala Harris should do television interviews. Some thought it was a bad look for her to appear on TV because they worried she would overshadow Biden, according to a person familiar with the conversations.
However, Harris wanted to do the interviews and she used the forum to prosecute the case against her. Donald Trump and describe how Biden has performed for the country over the past three and a half years.
To assuage concerned Democrats on Capitol Hill, the Biden campaign sent out talking points, citing internal research showing that Trump’s performance during the debate alienated many viewers.
The campaign noted that the president was suffering from a sore throat, according to a House Democratic aide who saw the material. Despite a rocky start for Biden, 3 out of 4 voters who watched the debate reported deep concerns about Trump’s temperament, the campaign said. And the vast majority also believed Biden was doing a better job addressing issues close to their hearts, the talking points showed.
Biden acknowledged his failure and worked with aides to rewrite part of his campaign speech in North Carolina on Friday. He wanted to address the issue directly and drafted a new closing that acknowledged his shortcomings on stage.
“I know I’m not a young man anymore,” he told his supporters in Raleigh. “I don’t walk as easily as I used to. I don’t speak as fluently as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to, but I know what I do know—I know how to tell the truth!”
Not since Richard Nixon’s fateful clash with John F. Kennedy in 1960 has a debate had so much potential to shake up a presidential race. Just as Nixon looked tired and exhausted, which damaged his candidacy, Biden showed little of the clarity and stage presence that voters expect from a commander in chief.
Many Democratic officeholders nevertheless remain with him, out of loyalty or fear of the chaos his quick retirement would unleash. Biden’s campaign hopes that this moment will fade in the coming weeks and that voters will turn their attention to Trump’s scandals and shortcomings as a leader.
Biden gave no sign that he is ready to withdraw. He spoke with brio at the North Carolina meeting and his advisers insisted he was in the running to stay.
“There are no conversations about that at all,” Michael Tyler, a campaign spokesman, told reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday when asked if Biden could step aside. “The Democratic voters chose – nominated Joe Biden. Joe Biden is the nominee.”
Biden plans to participate in another debate with Trump on September 10, three senior Biden officials said, adding that they have “all systems ready” for a rematch.
But some party officials have had enough; they don’t believe Biden can recover in time.
“Look what happened when [Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader] “Ginsburg refused to resign,” said a state Democratic Party chairman who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “What do we have now? She thought she was doing the right thing, but then she died, and now [conservatives] have a supermajority because they didn’t want to let go.”
Campaign officials admit Biden squandered an opportunity to improve his standing, assuming Trump would look completely unfit to serve in a side-by-side comparison before a large television audience.
And they hoped the debate would boost Biden’s flagging approval ratings. Instead, Biden’s performance became the story, overshadowing Trump’s repeated misstatements about his and Biden’s records.
One group of Biden loyalists blamed the other during the fallout. Some Biden allies questioned the preparation he received during a full week holed up at Camp David with aides guiding him through rehearsals.
Biden emerged from his hilltop retreat in Maryland looking pale and tired, his voice hoarse from what aides later said was a cold. At the lectern, he sometimes fumbled the facts, exaggerating people’s savings on insulin and falsely claiming that Trump wanted to eliminate Social Security, a popular retirement program for older Americans.
“Whoever prepared the president for the debate should be fired,” said Dick Harpootlian, a former South Carolina Democratic Party chairman and Biden fundraiser. “Anita Dunn, Jen O’Malley [Dillon] and some of these other people who helped him prepare did a terrible job,” he said, naming a senior Biden White House adviser and a top campaign official, respectively. “Whoever got him into the mindset for the debate needs to go.”
However disappointing, Biden’s performance did not necessarily hurt his chances or change the course of the race, Biden’s campaign advisers stressed.
Geoff Garin, a Biden pollster who conducted a survey of the debate, told NBC News: “We have to be honest about the fact that it was a missed opportunity for President Biden, but the reality is that voters’ preferences elections have not changed. by the debate in any significant way.”
There was even a little good news to come out of the debacle. A senior Biden campaign official said the operation raised $14 million the day of the debate and the morning after “in a sign of the strength of our grassroots support.”
The hour after the debate proved to be “the best hour of fundraising” since the campaign launched more than a year ago, the official said.
Democrats have received such reassurances before. Yet Biden’s approval rating has remained steady month after month. Some officials and donors have grown impatient, making the debate a potential tipping point.
“What happened [during the debate] is that the reality became clear to all of us,” said a person close to the White House. ‘We have lived with the hope that he [Biden] would have the stamina and physical capacity to provide the energetic personification of presidential leadership that is so crucial. But we have been misled about his capacity in that regard, and that has been clearly evident.”
Alan Kessler, a Biden fundraiser from Philadelphia, said: “Let’s take a deep breath and see how things develop in a week or 10 days. In the meantime, if people want to talk about everything from the potential of someone else [on the ticket] about how to deal with last night, maybe that needs to happen. But before people jump off bridges or start a draft movement, let’s take a deep breath and see how things unfold.”
Ultimately, whether Biden stays on the ticket largely depends on Biden. He was the big winner of the Democratic presidential primaries, which amounted to a coronation. Biden’s campaign has significant influence over his delegates, making it doubtful they would dump him over his protests.
In practice, Biden would have to step aside voluntarily. That would take some convincing from party leaders — mainly former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., whose endorsement of Biden in the 2020 primaries sent him to brought the nomination.
“The Democrats have a whole group of excellent people who can pick up the baton and carry it forward,” said one Biden fundraiser, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss party strategy. “This is really a decision that the president, the first family and his senior advisers need to take a serious look at. The fact is that politics is performative and his approval rating is stuck in the 30s and the country cannot afford to have Donald Trump back.”
“This is about more than Joe Biden,” the fundraiser added. “This is about the future of the country.”
So far, those with the gravitas to convince Biden to step aside have largely remained loyal. Obama sent out a message on X that said, “Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know. But this election is still between someone who has spent his life fighting for ordinary people and someone who only cares about himself.”
When asked by NBC News whether Biden is the best messenger at the top of the list, Pelosi did not give a direct answer.
“I’ve been a very strong supporter of President Biden,” she said Friday. “He’s a great president. He’s done great things for our country.”
“We have to keep going,” Clyburn added.
If Democratic elites were to stage an intervention and persuade Biden to resign, the party could face a new set of problems.
A divide is emerging within the party between those who believe Vice President Kamala Harris should be the heir apparent and others who prefer one of the country’s prominent governors, such as Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Gavin Newsom of California or J.B. Pritzker of Illinois.
Electing a governor would go both ways. It could mark a sharp break from a president who is largely unpopular, but it would risk alienating African-American voters who form a loyal Democratic base and prefer Harris.
There is enough frustration and concern about her [Harris] — she has no real support — that I don’t see her path to securing the nomination,” said a Democratic Party source, who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak freely about the vice president.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
