WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden’s allies scrambled on Friday to contain the damage from his feeble debate performance with Republican rival Donald Trump, as some Democrats considered whether they could replace him as their candidate for the 2024 US election.
Biden’s verbal stumbles and occasionally meandering responses in the Thursday night debate heightened voter concerns that the 81-year-old incumbent might be not be fit to serve another four-year term.
“I’d be lying to you if I told you I thought it was a great debate,” Democratic Representative Jim McGovern told reporters. Asked if it was time for the party to consider another nominee, he responded, “I haven’t come to any conclusion yet.”
Biden, the oldest US president to ever hold office, faced only token opposition during the party’s months-long nominating contest, and he has secured enough support to guarantee his spot as the Democratic nominee for the Nov. 5 election.
Former President Trump, 78, likewise overcame his intra-party challengers early in the year, setting the stage for a long and bitter general election fight.
One Biden donor, who asked for anonymity, called his performance “disqualifying” and predicted that some Democrats would revisit calls for him to step aside. That would give the party time to pick another nominee at its national convention, which starts on Aug. 19.
Democratic officials played down that possibility.
“It’s not likely to happen,” Biden campaign co-chair Mitch Landrieu said on CNN.
California Governor Gavin Newsom - who could be a leading Democratic alternative - dismissed the notion that Biden could be replaced. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, another possible replacement, urged Democrats to stop worrying.
“Joe Biden had a bad debate, right, but Donald Trump was a bad president,” Shapiro said.
Interviews with undecided voters confirmed that it was a bad night for Biden. They described his showing as feeble, embarrassing and difficult to watch.
Trump at times during the debate highlighted Biden’s tangled answers, saying during an exchange about the southern US border, “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.”
The Trump campaign released a video on Friday highlighting Biden’s stumbles. One adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the debate would help them compete in Democratic-leaning states like Virginia and Minnesota.
Questions about Trump’s fitness for office have arisen also over his conviction last month in New York for covering up hush money payments to a porn star, his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his chaotic term in office.
But despite a litany of falsehoods and deflections from Trump during the debate, the focus afterwards was squarely on Biden.
The 90-minute debate at CNN headquarters in Atlanta took place far earlier in the campaign than any modern presidential debate, more than four months before the election.
That could mitigate the damage for Biden, as the memory of his performance fades and news events generate fresh headlines.
Trump, for instance, is scheduled to be sentenced in New York on July 11, just days before his party convenes to formally nominate him. He still faces three other criminal indictments, though none appears likely to reach trial before November.
At a Waffle House restaurant in Atlanta after the debate, Biden told reporters he did not have concerns about his performance. “It’s hard to debate a liar,” he said.
Biden was headed for a Friday rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, a state that Democrats hope to win back from Republicans this November, before flying to New York for a fundraiser and the opening of a monument dedicated to the 1969 Stonewall riot for LGBT rights.
Trump will hold a rally on Friday in Virginia, a state he has lost twice but hopes to put into play in November.
Trump unleashed numerous familiar false claims at the debate, including that the 2020 election was fraudulent, that Democrats support infanticide and that migrants have carried out a wave of violent crime.
He defended his supporters arrested for storming the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, refused to say whether he would accept this year’s election results and suggested if he returns to the White House that he might prosecute Biden.
Biden called Trump a felon and noted that the majority of Trump’s former cabinet have declined to endorse his campaign.
Biden called Trump a “whiner” and a “child” who, he said, cheated on his wife with a porn star and had the “morals of an alley cat.” Trump said Biden was a “disaster” and a “Manchurian candidate” who favored China over the United States. At one point, the debate devolved into a fight over which man had a better golf game.
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