WASHINGTON – WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden is struggling to salvage his threatened re-election effort on Friday, as he holds a rally and sits down for a network television interview in a crucial battleground state, with his every answer surely scrutinized for evidence of his competence and aptitude to run for public office.
It could be a watershed moment for Biden, who is under pressure to abandon the campaign after his disastrous debate performance against republican donald trump has raised concerns that the 81-year-old Democrat may not be ready for the job for another four years.
The interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, taped after a campaign rally in Madison, Wisconsin, is expected to be intense and probing, and two people familiar with the president’s efforts said he was preparing aggressively. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.
There was broad agreement that Biden cannot afford to have another “bad day,” and this is how he dismissed it your debate failed. It was unclear whether even a reasonable performance would be enough to satisfy concerns about his fitness to serve.
While private angst among Democratic lawmakers, donors and strategists runs deep after Biden’s damaging debate performance, most in the party have kept the public fire going as they wait to see whether the president can restore some confidence with his weekend travel schedule and how to handle the Stephanopoulos interview. It will air in full on ABC on Friday night.
But three Democratic members of Congress have called on Biden to step down as a candidate, with Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Massachusetts, expressing his concerns in a radio interview Thursday and joining Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, and Raúl Grijalva, D-Arizona, in search of an alternative.
“President Biden has done our country a tremendous service, but now is the time for him to follow in the footsteps of one of our founding fathers, George Washington, and step aside to allow new leaders to rise up and compete against Donald Trump,” Moulton said. the radio. station WBUR on Thursday.
Biden appears to have brought his family and inner circle closer together as he tries to prove he is still Democrats’ best option to compete in November elections.
The omnipresent presence of Biden Hunter in the West Wing since the debate became an uncomfortable dynamic for many staffers, according to two Democrats close to the White House who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic.
For many employees, the vision of Hunter Biden, just weeks later his conviction on felony gun chargesTaking a greater role in counseling his father has been upsetting and a questionable choice at this high-stakes time, they said.
Biden’s re-election campaign is moving forward with aggressive plans despite the uncertainty. The company plans to combine its in-person events with a new $50 million advertising campaign this month aimed at capitalizing on high-audience moments like the Summer Olympics which begin in Paris on July 26th.
Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, First Lady Jill Biden and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff are scheduled to travel to every swing state this month, as organizers plan to knock on more than 3 million doors in July and August to make personal contact with voters in a new $17 million effort.
Biden himself is expected to campaign in Pennsylvania on Sunday.
Biden was initially scheduled to speak before the National Education Association in Philadelphia on Sunday, but the campaign canceled plans following the group’s strike announced on Friday. The president will not cross a picket line, the campaign said. He will still be in Pennsylvania this weekend. Biden will also travel to southwestern states including Nevada after hosting the NATO summit in Washington next week, the campaign said Friday. He will also continue to focus his travels on so-called “blue wall” states — Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan — that have been critical for him in the past.
In a strategy memo released Friday morning, the campaign also specifically emphasized that Biden would participate in “frequent impromptu moments” — once a hallmark of the politician’s gregarious and joyful career, but which has nevertheless diminished over the years. his presidency.
For Biden, every moment now is critical to restoring lost confidence stemming from his shaky performance in Atlanta last week. However, the president continued to make mistakes that did not help in this effort.
During an interview with WURD radio in Philadelphia that aired Thursday, Biden stumbled and said, “I’m proud to be, as I said, the first vice president, the first Black woman to serve with a Black president” — shuffling some of his oft-used lines about his pride in serving with the first black president and choosing the first black woman to be vice president.
Such verbal failures are not uncommon for Biden, but they are receiving expanded attention in this environment.
In a hastily organized meeting with more than 20 Democratic governors on Wednesday night, Biden acknowledged that he needs to sleep more and limit evening events so he can rest for work, according to three people granted anonymity to speak about the private meeting. California Gov. Gavin Newsom later told reporters in Holland, Michigan, that Biden’s comment about limiting events after 8 p.m. was said in jest, noting that he said it “with a smile on his face.” .
Newsom said no one in the room was “softening” the reality of last week’s debate.
“You looked at the physiology. You saw all about it. It was the breathing, it was the physicality, the whole thing,” Newsom said at a subsequent event in the Netherlands.
He said Biden asked all governors for advice and told the president to focus more on discussing the future.
There are signs that key groups are already defining positions on who should succeed Biden as the Democratic candidate.
Glynda C. Carr, CEO of the PAC Higher Heights for America, which supports Black women candidates, said Harris should lead the ticket if Biden resigned, saying anyone else would be “yet another example of the continued dismissal of Black women’s leadership in the narrative.” national.”
“To be clear, Vice President Harris should not appear on a list of potential replacements – Kamala Harris is the only successor,” Carr said.
Biden is expected to use his Madison rally to address his favorite talking points as he works to defeat Trump by addressing safeguarding democracy, the economy and “our rights and freedoms,” according to his campaign.
Wisconsin officials including Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan and state party chairman Ben Wikler will speak. Notably, Senator Tammy Baldwin, who is running for re-election in one of the most critical races for control of the Senate this year, will be elsewhere.
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Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti in Saugatuck, Michigan, and Aamer Madhani and Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.
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