Ron Ringlund is the president of a machine shop in southern Wisconsin. At 71 years old, he knows what it’s like to keep working after many have retired and the worries are over Joe Biden‘s age – until last night.
“I thought, ‘Well, it’s just the Republicans putting that out there to make him look bad,’ you know — but he looked bad last night,” said Ringlund, who said he usually leans on Democrats votes. Donald Trump as a threat to democracy. ‘Wisconsins are neck and neck right now, and only one thing can make a difference. And I think last night could have made a difference, and it scares me.
After Biden’s difficult debate performance on Thursday, Democrats and independent voters in swing states say they are increasingly disappointed and alarmed about the choice they face in November.
Leading Democrats are reportedly discussing whether Biden can step aside and award the nomination to someone else at the party’s national conference in August.
Ringlund said he is open to the idea of someone else taking Biden’s place, but was unsure who would get the national name recognition.
Related: It’s risky, but Joe Biden must make way for someone who can beat Donald Trump | Jonathan Freedland
“I’m not sure it would work, but it might be the only chance,” he said.
Mike Crute, co-host of a progressive radio talk show in Wisconsin called The Devil’s Advocates, threw a debate watch party last night in deep-blue Madison. The mood in the room was grim.
“It was tough,” Crute says. Even when he was organizing the party, he could barely watch.
“I walked out of the room, I drank copiously and came back into the room, and you know what, it was still Joe.” Crute, who describes himself as a “Berniecrat,” said he was nonetheless resigned to pushing for Biden during the campaign. And as heated as the debate was, he’s not sure Biden can be convinced to resign.
“When you’re the most powerful man in the world, who wants to say, ‘No, I’m too old to do this job’? I don’t know. It would have to come from his wife,” Crute said. “I don’t know who else would say to Joe, ‘Hey, Joe, it’s time to hang up the spurs.'”
The New Georgia Project Action Fund hosted a debate viewing party at a cigar bar about a mile from the debate stage. Biden’s talking points were already difficult to understand as he struggled to finish his sentences, and the acoustics in a bar full of loud conversations didn’t help. Here and there a sentence emerged from the noise – like Trump talking about how more people died under Biden during the pandemic.
A man on his third whiskey shouted at a friend at the bar, “He’s lying! That’s a lie. That’s one lie. I know that for a fact.”
Because the moderators — or, for that matter, Biden himself — weren’t fact-checking in real time, those watching at the bar were left with an assessment of the candidate’s appearance, mannerisms and tone.
For Biden, that was devastating.
Midway through the debate, Bridgemon Bolger, a political activist who has campaigned for Democrats in DeKalb County for decades, rolled his eyes and started laughing. “This is terrible,” he said. “It doesn’t look good.”
The next day, Bolger described the debate as a disaster, “from the moment Biden shuffled out, it was clear then”.
You didn’t have to hear every word to understand what was happening, he said. “I think it’s important for swing voters. People who haven’t made up their minds. Trump lied a lot, but he was coherent and articulate with his lies. Unless you’re a policy nerd, you don’t know that everything he said was untrue. He sounded better. He looked better. And Trump did a better job of appealing to those swing voters.”
Bolger is a party activist, and nothing about the debate will change his vote. But this isn’t about him, he said. “I talk to black men who are not hardcore, and they’re looking at this and thinking about voting for Trump or staying home. I’m very, very concerned.”
Devin Barrington-Ward, a progressive activist and city council candidate in Atlanta, said he was unimpressed with Biden’s performance, noting that his weakness provides an opening for younger voters to make their demands heard, such as ending support for the war in Gaza. “If he does that, there may be a path to victory.”
Sam Hutcheson, an engineer in the Atlanta suburb of Tucker, said Trump is still much worse than Biden, but he worries that swing voters will see what happened last night and stay home, vote for a third-party candidate or vote for Trump out of spite.
“In 2016, it was a really bad idea,” he said of Trump’s candidacy. “In 2020, it was a worse idea. But since then, he’s literally participated in fomenting an insurrection against the man who beat him. If that doesn’t disqualify you and get you back in office, nothing will.”
Hutcheson said he is surprised at the double standard being applied to Biden. But he is also angry that Biden appears to be the last line of defense for American democracy, and that what he saw last night is the modern replacement for substantive debate.
“I think Joe Biden is a nice person,” Hutcheson said. “He’s probably the most decent person in this office since Jimmy Carter. But he’s an 80-year-old man and he did what 80-year-old men do.”
“It is not age-discriminatory to tell the truth,” he added.
