Above all, Joe Biden’s allies hoped he would demonstrate strength and energy on the debate stage, quelling concerns about the 81-year-old Democrat’s physical and mental fitness.
However, on the most prominent stage in U.S. politics Thursday night, Biden fell short of these modest expectations.
By the end of the 90-minute showdown, the Democratic president’s allies — party strategists and rank-and-file voters alike — were in a state of panic following a debate performance marred by repeated stumbles, uncomfortable pauses, and a quiet speaking style that was often hard to follow. Publicly and privately, Democrats began questioning whether the party could or should replace him as the presidential nominee against the 78-year-old Republican former President Donald Trump this fall.
“I’m not the only one whose heart is breaking right now. There’s a lot of people who watched this tonight and felt terribly for Joe Biden,” former Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill said on MSNBC. “I don’t know if things can be done to fix this.”
The pressing question now is whether the damage to Biden’s campaign is permanent. Many voters have yet to focus on an election still over four months away. The president and his allies have millions of dollars yet to be spent on advertising and swing state infrastructure. There is precedent for recovering from rough debate performances, such as Barack Obama’s rebound after a lackluster debate against Mitt Romney in 2012. Additionally, Democrat John Fetterman managed to defeat a Republican rival in 2022 after a difficult debate months after a stroke.
Biden’s Gamble
Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign has always been a gamble, relying on the hope that voters would ultimately support an 81-year-old politician with weak approval ratings in a rematch that few Americans desire. Despite these liabilities, Biden’s team maintained he was uniquely positioned to prevent Trump from returning to the White House, as he did four years ago.
They predicted that Biden’s political coalition would rally around him after being reminded of Trump’s chaotic leadership. However, Biden’s underwhelming debate performance did little to inspire such confidence.
“It was a slow start. That’s obvious to everyone. I’m not going to debate that point,” Vice President Kamala Harris said on CNN post-debate. “I’m talking about the choice in November. I’m talking about one of the most important elections in our collective lifetime.”
Biden’s surrogates were slow to enter the post-debate spin room in Atlanta, and when they did, they largely avoided press questions. Instead, they criticized Trump’s numerous falsehoods during the debate, including his failure to disavow the Capitol attackers from January 6, 2021.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential future presidential candidate and Biden’s prominent surrogate in the Atlanta spin room, urged Democrats not to panic.
“I think it’s unhelpful. And I think it’s unnecessary. We’ve got to go in, we’ve got to keep our heads high,” Newsom said on MSNBC. “We’ve got to have the back of this president. You don’t turn back because of one performance. What kind of party does that?”
Despite this, signs of anxiety were apparent as Democrats began to openly suggest finding an alternative to Biden. Some party officials pointed to a social media post from former Obama campaign aide Ravi Gupta.
“Every Democrat I know is texting that this is bad,” Gupta wrote on X. “Just say it publicly and begin the hard work of creating space in the convention for a selection process. I’ll vote for a corpse over Trump, but this is a suicide mission.”
Democratic Party Rules
Under current Democratic Party rules, replacing Biden as the party’s nominee would be difficult, if not impossible, without his cooperation or the willingness of party officials to rewrite the rules at the August national convention.
Biden won the overwhelming majority of Democratic delegates during the state-by-state primary process. Party rules state, “Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.”
However, DNC rules do not have the same strict “faithless delegate” rules as the RNC, which ignore votes against a delegate’s pledged position.
Republicans, meanwhile, were pleased with Biden’s lackluster performance. Yet, Trump’s co-campaign chief dismissed the idea that Democrats would try to nominate someone other than Biden.
“There’s so many political experts on X, so we’ll hear a lot from them, I’m sure, in the next few days because they’ve all run so many campaigns,” Chris LaCivita said sarcastically. “But the only way that happens is if Joe Biden voluntarily steps down, and he’s not going to do that.”
