In the week since his disastrous debate defeat, he has accomplished neither. In fact, he has regressed.
On Wednesday evening, Biden and Vice President Harris met with Democratic governors to listen and express their commitment. One attendee described the meeting as candid and productive, but added that it “should have happened last Friday,” the day after the debate.
The same day, Biden was quoted as saying to campaign staff, “Nobody’s trying to get rid of me. I’m not resigning.” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden would “absolutely not” resign.
“We’re going to win this election,” Biden said in an interview broadcast Thursday on a radio show aimed at black listeners in Wisconsin. “Just like we did in 2020, we’re going to beat Donald Trump.”
Biden’s family remains staunchly behind him and he is determined to continue his campaign. His staff continues to prepare a schedule of upcoming events while trying to tame the tide of criticism. For now, the reelection campaign continues. But it continues in crisis mode.
Many Democratic strategists paint a dire picture. Some of them believe Biden has no realistic path to victory. Many campaign officials, donors, strategists and others privately believe, and some have said publicly, that Biden should drop out of the race.
Biden is under extraordinary pressure in Wisconsin, the nation’s most Democratic battleground state, with a campaign rally in Madison on Friday and a one-on-one interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that will air as a primetime special.
The president entered last week’s Atlanta debate narrowly behind former President Donald Trump in national polls and even further behind in polls in several battleground states. A new poll released Wednesday by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal showed he has fallen further behind since the debate. The New York Times/Siena College poll found that 74 percent of people think the president is too old to serve.
Biden campaign officials say internal surveys suggest few overall setbacks, but they are not ignorant of Biden’s predicament: They knew the moment Biden stumbled early in the debate that an already tough campaign got even tougher.
Biden knows this too, having been in politics for decades. But with all eyes on him and his supporters searching for evidence that his debate performance was just a bad night, Biden has kept a low profile and so far has failed to do what’s needed to put him in a good position.
The Supreme Court ruled Monday in one of the biggest cases this term that the president is immune from criminal prosecution for acts performed in official capacity. The decision was a victory for President Trump, who had brought the issue to the court asserting absolute immunity for his actions that led to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The decision also gave Biden an opportunity to highlight one of his central campaign issues: upholding democracy and the rule of law. “The American people must decide whether to entrust the presidency to Donald Trump again, knowing that he will be even more bold to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants,” he said at the White House that night.
Biden spoke for just four minutes and didn’t answer any questions. The following night, he appeared at a fundraiser in McLean, Virginia, where he also spoke for less than 10 minutes and didn’t answer any questions. His other public events this week include a severe weather briefing on Tuesday and a Medal of Honor ceremony on Wednesday.
In the aftermath of the debate, the Biden campaign appeared to succeed in blunting calls from Democrats to drop out of the race. Campaign and White House officials spoke by phone over the weekend, pleading with allies to back off their attacks, despite calls from prominent columnists and commentators to back down. Their argument was that alternatives such as an open convention would be chaotic and would make Biden even less likely to win the election than endorsing the Democratic nominee.
Biden made his case in the hours after the debate. At a rally in North Carolina the next day, his voice was strong and his energy was high, both in stark contrast to the debate. If the rally had been a harbinger of a series of similar events, it might have worked. But it was a one-off, and Biden disappeared from the public eye afterwards. By the start of this week, anxiety levels within the party had begun to rise significantly, with calls, some privately and some publicly, for Biden to withdraw.
In North Carolina, Biden addressed the issue of age more directly than he had in the past. “I can’t walk as easily as I used to,” he said. “I can’t talk as smoothly as I used to. I can’t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I know. I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. And I know how to do this job. … And as millions of Americans know, I know that when I get knocked down, I can get up.”
He has tried to address the issue of his age on various occasions this year, sometimes with humor, sometimes like after the debate. He has never consistently addressed the obvious signs of aging. Now he has no choice. He must address this issue. Not just with words, but with continued actions.
Speaking at a fundraiser in MacLean, Biden blamed his debate performance on jet lag from an international trip in June: “I wasn’t very smart. I decided to fly around the world a couple of times. I don’t know how many time zones I went through. I didn’t listen to my staff. And then I came back and I almost fell asleep onstage.”
He visited Europe twice in early June, flying across nine time zones from Italy to California after the second visit to attend a fundraiser with former President Barack Obama, but then returned to the East Coast for 11 days of rest and preparation before the debate.
Democratic governors on Wednesday pressed Trump to be more visible and active, with some warning that it would be hard for him to win in their states. They also told him that simply stoking fears of another Trump presidency and the damage it could do to our democratic institutions and the country would not be enough to win. “They were saying they needed a compelling vision,” said one person at the event.
The president has a limited time to prove he can withstand the rigors of a campaign and, if he wins in November, serve another four years in office.
More events are planned for later this week, including an interview with Stephanopoulos. But supporters say one TV interview is just a small part of what Biden needs to do to demonstrate his ability to handle unscripted situations. State governors have told him they want to see more.
“They have to take a chance,” said one of the governors who attended the meeting. “I’m adamant about this. They should have a town hall meeting and answer the questions.”
Biden has been on the phone with senior party officials and other allies — one of his calls Tuesday was with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack — and they didn’t discuss politics.
“He asked why beef prices are so high for American families,” Vilsack said. For his Cabinet colleagues, it was proof that Biden was “doing his job” despite the barrage of criticism aimed at the president.
Part of the job now is to decide whether to stay in the race or drop out. Biden may sound defiant and determined, but he must consider what the wisest path forward is. He knows he has little time left in the final months of the campaign to prove to his party that he can lead it effectively and show voters that he is qualified to serve another four-year term.
Those who have known him the longest say he will make decisions based on his own analysis, not on what others tell him, and not simply on personal ambition or vanity.
“I’m very confident in this,” Vilsack said, “that whatever decisions he makes about the future of the country and the nation, they will be based on what he believes is best for the country.”
