WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s aides and allies distributed talking points to Democrats, took calls from nervous donors and inserted new lines into the president’s speech Friday afternoon as part of an all-out effort to contain the damage from his weak debate performance the night before.
Biden’s raspy voice and measured delivery rattled Democratic leaders who had hoped a forceful performance would dispel lingering concerns that he is not up to the rigors 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 fundraiser for Biden on Saturday and admitted he has received some nervous calls from donors. Still, he said no one dropped out of the event and Biden proved he “knows how to pick himself up and dust himself off.”
The 90-minute debate in Atlanta crystallized a sense of foreboding that had been growing among Democrats for months. Quietly, some strategists are now considering possible replacements at the top of the list if Biden withdraws.
“The party needs to consider its options in terms of how we approach our new post-debate circumstances. But we don’t have a lot of time,” said Tom Daschle, former Democratic leader in the Senate, in an interview with NBC News.
Biden’s performance created uncertainty within his own team in dealing with the fallout, which continued until Friday night when The New York Times editorial board called him to get out of the race. After the debate, Biden campaign advisers discussed whether Vice President Kamala Harris should give television interviews. Some believed it would be ugly for her to appear on TV, fearing she would upstage Biden, according to a person familiar with the conversations.
Harris, however, wanted to do the interviews and used the forum to prosecute the case against Trump and describe how well Biden has done for the country over the past three and a half years.
Seeking to appease anxious Democrats on Capitol Hill, the Biden campaign sent out talking points citing internal polls that show Donald Trump’s debate performance alienated many viewers.
The campaign noted that the president had a sore throat, according to a House Democratic aide who saw the material. Despite Biden’s rocky start, three in four voters who watched the debate reported deep concerns about Trump’s temperament, according to the campaign. And the vast majority also believed Biden did a better job of addressing issues they care about, the talking points showed.
Acknowledging that he had faltered, Biden worked with aides to rewrite a portion of his campaign speech in North Carolina on Friday. He wanted to directly address the issue and drafted a new closing that acknowledged his lapses on stage.
“I know I’m not a young man,” he told his supporters in Raleigh. “I don’t walk as easily as I used to. I don’t speak as well as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to, but I know what I know – I know how to tell the truth!”
Not since Richard Nixon’s fateful confrontation with John F. Kennedy in 1960 has a debate had so much potential to shake up a presidential race. Just as Nixon appeared haggard and tired, hurting his candidacy, Biden displayed little of the lucidity and stage presence that voters expect from a commander in chief.
Still, many Democratic officeholders continue to support him, either out of loyalty or out of fear of the chaos his rapid reform would unleash. Biden’s campaign hopes the momentum will fade in the coming weeks and voters will turn their attention to the scandals and Trump’s shortcomings as a leader.
Biden has given no sign that he is ready to withdraw. He spoke enthusiastically at the rally in North Carolina and his aides insisted he was in the race to stay.
“There is no conversation whatsoever about that,” campaign spokesman Michael Tyler told reporters Friday aboard Air Force One when asked whether Biden might step down. “Democratic voters elected – nominated Joe Biden. Joe Biden is the nominee.”
Biden plans to participate in another debate with Trump on Sept. 10, three senior Biden officials said, saying “all systems are in place” for a rematch.
But some party officials have seen enough; they do not believe Biden can recover in time.
“See what happened when [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg refused to resign,” said a Democratic state party chairman who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “Now, what do we have? She thought she was doing the right thing, but then she died, and now they have a supermajority because she wouldn’t give up.”
Campaign advisors admit that Biden wasted an opportunity to improve his position. They had calculated that, in a side-by-side comparison before a huge television audience, Trump would appear wholly unfit to serve.
And they hoped the debate would boost Biden’s stagnant approval ratings. Instead, Biden’s performance became the story, overshadowing Trump’s repeated misstatements about his and Biden’s track record.
One group of Biden supporters blamed another amid the fallout. Some of Biden’s allies questioned the preparation he gained during a full week holed up at Camp David with aides who guided him through rehearsals.
Biden emerged from his retreat in the Maryland hills looking pale and tired, his voice hoarse from what aides later said was a cold. From the pulpit, he sometimes confused the facts, exaggerating people’s savings on insulin and falsely claiming that Trump wanted end Social Securitya popular pension program for older Americans.
“Whoever prepared the president for the debate should be fired,” said Dick Harpootlian, former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party and a fundraiser for Biden. “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 senior campaign official, respectively. “Whoever prepared him for the debate needs to go.”
Disappointing as it may be, Biden’s performance did not necessarily hurt his chances or change the course of the race, Biden campaign advisers insisted.
Geoff Garin, a Biden pollster who conducted research on the debate, told NBC News: “We should be honest about the fact that it was a missed opportunity for President Biden, but the reality is that voter preferences in the election were not significantly changed by the debate.”
There was even some good news emerging from the disaster. A senior Biden campaign official said the operation raised $14 million on the day of the debate and the morning after “in a sign of the strength of our grassroots support.”
The post-debate hour proved to be “the best fundraising hour” since the campaign launched more than a year ago, the official said.
Democrats have obtained such assurances before. Yet month after month, Biden’s approval rating doesn’t change. Some officials and donors grew impatient, making the debate a potential turning point.
“What happened [during the debate] is that the reality has become 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 ability to provide the energetic embodiment of the presidential leadership that is so critical. But we were misled about his ability in this regard, and it became clearly evident.”
Alan Kessler, a Philadelphia-based fundraiser for Biden, said: “Let’s take a deep breath and see how things evolve in a week or 10 days. In the meantime, if people want to argue about everything from potentially having someone else [on the ticket] about dealing with last night, maybe this should happen. But before people jump off bridges or start a recruitment drive, let’s take a deep breath and see how things play out.”
Whether Biden stays on the ticket ultimately depends largely on Biden. He was the big winner of the Democratic presidential primaries, which meant a coronation. Biden’s campaign has substantial influence over his delegates, making it doubtful they will abandon him over his protests.
In practice, Biden would need to step aside voluntarily. That may require some convincing from the party’s mandarins — notably, 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 primaries 2020 led to his nomination. .
“The Democrats have a whole group of notable people who can pick up the baton and carry it forward,” said one Biden fundraiser, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the party’s strategy. “This is indeed a decision that the president, the first family and their senior advisors must seriously consider. 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.
“That’s more than Joe Biden,” the fundraiser added. “This is about the future of the country.”
So far, those who had the gravitas necessary to convince Biden to step aside have remained largely loyal. Obama released a message on X which said: “Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know. But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary people his entire life and someone who only cares about himself.”
Asked by NBC News whether Biden is the best messenger at the top of the ticket, Pelosi did not respond directly.
“I’m a huge supporter of President Biden,” she said Friday. “He is a great president. He did great things for our country.”
“We must stay the course,” Clyburn added.
If Democratic elites intervened and persuaded Biden to drop out, the party could face a new set of problems.
Within the party, a divide is emerging between those who believe Vice President Kamala Harris should be the heir apparent and others who prefer one of the nation’s prominent governors, such as Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Gavin Newsom of California or JB Pritzker. of Illinois.
Choosing a governor would be a solution for both sides. It could mark a sharp break with a president who is largely unpopular, but it would risk alienating African-American voters who are a loyal Democratic constituency and prefer Harris.
“There is enough frustration and concern with her [Harris] — she has no real support — that I don’t see her path to securing the nomination,” said a Democratic source, speaking on condition of anonymity to speak freely about the vice president.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
