President Joe Biden has received a slow trickle of support from some Democrats after his rocky debate performance on Thursday, which has led to a flood of panic from party strategists and decisive abandonment by the U.S. media establishment.
The Biden campaign is facing a political reckoning after his shaky, and at times incoherent, performance at the debate, which triggered anxiety amongst Democrats and provoked calls for him to step aside as the Democratic nominee. The president’s reelection campaign has stood its ground, emboldened by a stronger show from Biden during a scripted speech in North Carolina on Friday.
The possibility of a Biden-less ticket was previously taboo among party players until Biden’s widely panned performance in Thursday night’s debate. In what appeared to be a sea-change, American media giants — from columnists historically chummy with the president to the imposing New York Times editorial board itself — turned on Biden, calling on him to gracefully bow out. Their appeals joined a growing chorus of concerned domestic and international allies, who fear this event marks a “turning point” for Biden.
“Marcus Aurelius was a great emperor but he screwed up his succession by passing the baton to his feckless son Commodus (He, from the Gladiator). Whose disastrous rule started Rome's decline,” Polish foreign affairs minister Radek Sikorski posted on Friday. “It's important to manage one's ride into the sunset.”
Despite the growing calls for his abdication, some influential Democrats remain committed to Biden as their 2024 nominee. Former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton offered their unequivocal support for Biden, invoking the memory of other “bad debate nights,” including Obama’s own in a 2012 debate with GOP nominee Mitt Romney.
Perhaps the most emphatic voice came from Rep. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who wrote “fuck that” in reply to The New York Times editorial board’s appeal for Biden to step aside in the race.
Others, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Biden surrogate Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), doubled down on earlier comments backing the president.
“A setback is nothing more than a setup for a comeback. Vote,” Jeffries wrote on X Saturday morning, after expressing support for “the ticket” the previous day.
Meanwhile, Garcia, who previously acknowledged that Biden’s debate performance wasn’t his strongest, attempted to shut down rumors of Democratic disaffection, telling MSNBC’s The Weekend: “Democrats rallied around our president. We are with him 100 percent.”
But the extent to which Democrats are “rallying” behind Biden remains unclear.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi evaded reporters’ questions on Friday about whether Biden is best suited to lead the party, opting instead to point out Biden’s “integrity” compared to former President Donald Trump’s “dishonesty.”
Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), a staunch Biden supporter who helped him clinch the White House in 2020, responded to concerns about Biden’s capacity Friday, saying: “Stay the course. Chill out.”
But Clyburn also noted that while he’s “a Biden-Harris person,” he’ll also be “for Biden if Harris ain’t there” and “for Harris if Biden ain’t there,” leaving the door open for Biden to be supplanted as the Democratic nominee by his vice president if he so chooses.
Both Garcia and Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) chalked up the freakout to a fixation with beating back Trump in November, assuring that Biden is still the man for the job.
“I think the reaction is essentially that people are obsessed, all the Democrats, with beating Donald Trump,” Garcia said. “We know that democracy is on the line.”
Crockett echoed that line, criticizing her party for working itself up into a “frenzy.”
“It is so wild to me, and it has been quite annoying if I am going to be perfectly honest, that Democrats get into a frenzy. It is almost like we are scared of our shadow sometimes,” Crockett told MSNBC’s Ali Velshi on Saturday. “I think it is because we understand the stakes and everybody’s saying we have to have the best of the best. And let me tell you something — there is no better heart, there is no better man.”
The Biden campaign, for its part, has not conceded to backing down.
“A debate is one moment in a campaign,” senior Biden adviser Anita Dunn told The Weekend on Saturday, saying that the question on Biden’s team was not whether the president should drop out of the race, but rather: “Okay, we had a bad debate. What do we do next?”
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