All sounds fine in President Biden’s world. That disastrous debate? Just a bad night. Those disastrous poll numbers? Just inaccurate. Gloomy election predictions? The usual pessimists, wrong again. Democrats urging him to back down? No one is telling him that.
To Biden, the crisis that many Democrats who don’t make his paycheck (and some who do) see as a threat is just another obstacle along the way, another hurdle to overcome, just as it always has been. Biden doesn’t buy the idea that he’s declining as he ages. Nor does he accept the idea that he’s being outdone by former President Donald J. Trump. Biden doesn’t believe many in his own party want him gone.
His prime-time interview, which aired Friday night on ABC News, was an exercise not just in damage control but in reality control. For much of his long and storied political career, Biden has succeeded through sheer force of will, defiantly defiantly proving he can do the things no one expected. But now, at what may be the most threatening moment of his presidency, that confidence has increasingly isolated him within his party.
“You really see the president in denial and escapism,” Julián Castro, a former housing secretary who ran against Biden for the 2020 Democratic nomination, said in an interview. “We need a president who can honestly and accurately assess how well he performs in this race, and that interview didn’t give me any confidence that he has a good grasp of that.”
David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama who has long expressed concern about Biden’s decision to run again, said the president is rightly proud of his record. “But Biden is dangerously out of touch with the concerns people have about his ability going forward and where he stands in this race,” he wrote on social media.
Biden’s 22-minute performance with George Stephanopoulos was not as disastrous as his debate with Trump eight days earlier. But while Biden’s most loyal supporters appear to feel safe enough to back him, those who have turned or were close to turning their backs on him do not seem to feel safe, and time may be running out for the party to change its nominee as some would hope.
Biden appeared rosier, with his legs crossed and his hands in his lap, and appeared calmer, but his voice was raspy again and he faltered at times, struggling to finish sentences. He played down concerns about his health, denied he was weaker than he had been and did not answer questions about his medical exam.
He repeatedly took responsibility for his debate performance, saying “nobody’s to blame, it’s me,” but later blamed fatigue, illness and Trump “yelling” and distraction. Still, he suggested he wasn’t sure if he actually watched the debate tapes. He said he takes cognitive tests every day because “I run the world,” and that he would only step down “if the almighty God came down and said, ‘Joe, get out of the running.'”
Perhaps the comment that sparked the most irritation among Democrats was Biden’s response when Stephanopoulos asked him how he would feel if he lost to Trump in January and had to hand the White House back to the former president: “As long as I gave it my all and did the best job I could, I’d know how I’d feel. That’s what this is about,” Biden replied.
Several Democrats have since expressed outrage, declaring the election not about winning participation prizes but about stopping a convicted felon trying to overturn an election they lost, urging the “abandonment” of the Constitution to return them to power, and vowing to dedicate their next term to “revenge” against their opponents.One House Democrat, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of backlash, said he hopes the Almighty comes to talk to Biden soon.
Every president lives to some extent in a bubble of his own making: secluded in his Pennsylvania Avenue fortress, surrounded by throngs of aides and Secret Service agents, assured by allies of his unique importance in the world. Biden, who will be 86 at the end of his second term, has decided to run for reelection convinced he is uniquely capable of beating Trump.
A dozen Democratic lawmakers and strategists contacted after the ABC interview expressed serious doubts about whether Biden can beat Trump at this point, but it’s unclear whether they had conveyed that to Biden himself. Friends of the president tend to be hesitant to deliver the toughest news directly, often trying instead to pass it along to news outlets that can downplay the message or aides who may or may not be able to deliver it in full.
If the message didn’t get through privately, it could be louder in public. A Democrat from his own party predicted more elected officials would call for the president to step down. Another Democratic ally in the White House said the interview didn’t solve the problem and was tantamount to a stay of execution for Biden. Both people spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.
“This interview was necessary but not enough,” said Paul Begala, a leading Democratic strategist. “It will not quell the growing anger and resentment among Democrats. Unless President Biden does a Simone Biles triple flip with a double twist, there’s no way he’s going to get Democrats to not watch this debate.”
For many of the president’s Democrats, the interview was difficult to watch: Though Stephanopoulos was polite and professional, he repeatedly pressed Biden with tough questions about his own mental capacity and future capabilities that no octogenarian wants to face.
At one point, Stephanopoulos appeared to offer Biden a dignified escape route, but the president ultimately rejected it.
“The general feeling out there is this,” Stephanopoulos said of Democrats. “They love you and they’ll be forever grateful to you for beating Donald Trump in 2020. They think you’ve done a great job as president and have had a lot of the successes you’ve described. But they’re worried about you and the country, and they don’t think you can win. They’re hoping you leave clean, and they’ll be rooting for you if you do. What are your thoughts on that?”
“I would say that’s not the case for the majority of people,” Biden replied, ignoring polls that show about half of Democrats think he should withdraw. “There are certainly people out there who are.” He then compared the current situation to four years ago, when it was unclear whether he could win. “We had the same thing in 2020,” Biden said, mimicking a doomsayer. “‘Oh, Biden, I don’t know. What’s he going to do? He might beat me.'”
Stephanopoulos said he has never seen a president with a 36 percent approval rating be re-elected. “Well, I don’t see that being my approval rating,” Biden said. “That’s not what the polls are showing.”
The White House knew one interview wouldn’t resolve the crisis over the debate, but Mr. Biden and his aides hoped that rallies like his one in Wisconsin on Friday and a news conference during the NATO summit in Washington next week could at least calm things down and slowly begin to restore trust.
Biden has come close to defeat so many times over the past half-century that he has an unusual belief in his ability to bounce back from any setback. He sees himself as a long-game player and remains calm despite the turmoil around him. In recent days, Biden has sounded remarkably calm in conversations with friends, despite his recognition of the challenges he faces.
Biden faces a weekend where Democrats will decide what to do next. Some Democratic lawmakers and big donors are organizing efforts to pressure the president to either withdraw from the race or rethink his approach. The president’s television appearance on Friday seems unlikely to thwart that.
“I’m not sure it’s going to do much, if anything, to calm the nerves of Democrats on Capitol Hill,” said Jim Manley, a former top adviser to Senate Democrats. “The next few days are going to be tough.”
