Democrats faced a crisis on Friday as a broad swath of lawmakers, party officials and activists began actively considering what had previously been a pipe dream for pundits and concerned voters: the prospect of fielding an alternative to President Biden just four months before Election Day.
For two years, Democratic leaders confined concerns about Biden’s performance and age to private meetings and informal conversations, wary of weakening the incumbent president in a rematch with former President Donald Trump.
But Biden’s performance in the debate on Thursday was choppy and at times incoherent, even on politically advantageous topics such as abortion rights, which led to the controversy exploding into public view.
“Biden’s failure to rise to the occasion is going to cause a serious re-evaluation within his party. They’re going to say, is he just having a bad night or is he ready to move forward?” the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights leader who has long enjoyed a warm relationship with Biden, said in an interview a few hours after the debate.
Asked for his own assessment, Sharpton said he hoped it was just a “bad night.”
“But our failure to respond to this situation will not be easily forgotten,” he added.
On Capitol Hill, some Democrats openly acknowledged Biden’s performance had been dismal, while others offered brief signs of support, hoping the focus would return to Trump’s lies.
In Atlanta, Biden aides met privately with anxious donors, whose fears about what one adviser to the party’s major donors called “Trump Collapse II” reached new heights overnight.
In message threads, Democrats vented despair, expressed regret for not pushing for a more competitive primary and speculated about alternatives to Biden. And on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” a bastion of support for the president, one host wrote: That he would withdraw from the race.
Some Democrats have privately and frankly said Biden shouldn’t be their nominee, but Biden’s critics acknowledged that as of Friday morning there was no agreement, let alone a formal plan, about how or even whether to urge Biden to drop out.
Many said such an unusual move carried significant political risks and could embroil the party in a messy internal battle less than three months before early voting begins.
Polls are not yet clear about the impact, but Democratic Party officials have been quick and clear to reject the idea that Biden would or should step aside. The decision is effectively his alone. He would almost certainly need to release his own delegates so they can support another candidate. So far, the president and his campaign have signaled he has no plans to step aside.
“Absolutely not,” campaign spokeswoman Mia Ehrenberg said.
Speaking at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Friday, Biden acknowledged his failures but stressed he plans to press on with the campaign.
“Obviously, I know I’m not young,” he said. “I can’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I can’t argue as well as I used to. But I know what I know.”
“I know how to do this job,” he added. “I know how to get things done. Like millions of Americans, I know I can get knocked down and get back up.”
One senior party strategist said the only Democratic leaders who could convince Biden to drop out of the race were top members of Congress, former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and, of course, first lady Jill Biden and Biden’s family.
“Sometimes debates go horribly,” Obama said in a statement, “trust me, I know. But this election is a choice between someone who has spent their whole life fighting for ordinary people and someone who only thinks about themselves.”
Asked on Capitol Hill whether Biden should drop out of the race, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the top House Democrat, said “no.”
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said she doesn’t think Biden should step down as his party’s presidential nominee and isn’t aware of anyone pressuring him to do so.
Other lawmakers expressed dismay. “I still can’t comprehend what happened,” said Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn. “It was a terrible debate. We all have to acknowledge that.”
What was left unsaid was equally revealing. Asked whether Biden would be able to do the job, Rep. Ro Khanna of California, a Biden surrogate, said, “We’ll defer to the president on that.”
“We can do it as a team,” he said. “We have a great team that helps us govern.”
He added, “Biden is the one who won the delegates.”
Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, said Biden presented a “compelling vision for our country” during the debate, but did not directly answer a question about whether Biden should remain a candidate, instead repeatedly directing the conversation back to Trump.
“Donald Trump has been convicted of a felony and has repeatedly demonstrated his instability and inability to tell the truth, so he should not remain the Republican nominee,” he said.
Julián Castro, a Texas Democrat and former housing secretary who criticized Biden’s memory during a 2019 Democratic primary debate, criticized party leaders for working to ensure Biden wasn’t facing a credible challenger.
“The Democratic Party establishment, at Biden’s request, has decided to fully cooperate with Biden,” he said. “Once Biden decided to run, the Democratic Party closed off all other options. Only the establishment can reverse that four months before the election.”
Mr. Biden’s team was busy reassuring supporters on Friday morning. In the basement of a downtown Atlanta hotel, one floor below a coffee shop called Jittery Joe’s, top Biden campaign officials were huddled with big donors who had made the trip to the debate, including campaign chair Jennifer O’Malley Dillon and campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez.
O’Malley Dillon acknowledged Biden’s poor performance, according to multiple attendees, but tried to draw parallels to Obama’s weak showing in the first debate in 2012. She was Biden’s deputy campaign manager in that election, which Obama won.
Many party leaders have publicly endorsed Biden, including several Democrats often mentioned as future presidential candidates: Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker have all voiced their support, and California Governor Gavin Newsom was a Biden backer during Thursday night’s debate.
Biden has survived tough debates before, and campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz posted on social media that “11pm to midnight was the campaign’s best grassroots fundraising hour since we launched,” adding on Friday that the team raised $14 million on the day of the debate and the morning after.
Dmitri Mellhorn, a political adviser to Reid Hoffman, one of the party’s top donors, warned his network not to make any rash decisions.
“Joe had a terrible night, intensifying concerns about his age, his biggest weakness in the election,” Mellhorn wrote. “The likelihood of Trumpocalypse II has increased significantly.”
He added: “Yet we all need to take a deep breath. Reactive or panicky behavior will rarely succeed.”
Sen. John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, was returning from Israel during the debate and said he was “heartbroken” by the video and online reactions.
“I think we can all agree it was difficult, but it really hurt my heart to see how quickly everyone panicked and got aggressive,” he said, reflecting on his halting debate performance during the 2022 campaign after suffering a stroke. “It wasn’t Joe Biden’s best day, but that’s not the whole story of the great president he has been. And who could ignore the alternative?”
He said voters should “keep calm, enjoy a beer and have a little fun on the Fourth of July.”
But some members of the DNC have struggled with whether Democrats were right to follow Biden, even though it is inconceivable that the DNC — which is technically the political arm of the Democratic White House — would oppose a sitting president of its own party.
“As members of the DNC, I feel responsible that some of us had early concerns about Biden running for a second term, but few of us actually voiced them publicly,” said Bert Dame, a DNC member from Hawaii. “We should have at least anticipated that this might be an issue, and we created a structure that is now difficult to address.”
“We are ashamed,” he added.
While party officials have been reluctant to publicly voice concerns about Biden’s age and health, voters have made them clear.
“Biden needs to step aside, but that’s not what I went into the debate thinking,” said Mack Hudson, 57, an independent voter from Tucson, Arizona. “I’m hoping for the best. Trump may lose, but Biden can’t. There’s still time for a new candidate.”
The moment marked a painful conclusion for the small number of Democrats who have publicly called for Biden to step down.
James Zogby, a pollster and longtime Democratic National Committee member, said watching the debate left him “sad and distressed.”
He and others called for competitive primaries but were rebuffed by party leaders.
“If that were to happen, it would be a dramatic event and potentially deadly,” he said. “I’m outraged that they put us in this situation.”
The report Shane Goldmacher, Theodore Schleifer, Maya King and Reid J. Epstein.
