For Democrats, Thursday night's debate was a nightmare. President Joe Biden's performance in Atlanta, watched by more than 50 million people, sparked panic and a flurry of op-eds and commentators calling for the 81-year-old president to drop out of the debate.
“It's widely acknowledged that the president performed poorly. He didn't do well. He had a bad night. But there were no big conversations, no soul-searching sessions. He just got back to work,” said Katie Rogers, a New York Times reporter covering the Biden administration.
Rogers, who wrote an in-depth book examining first lady Jill Biden's influence, said he hasn't heard any movement from the Biden family to question whether it's worth seeking reelection. In fact, calls for Biden to step down will likely only make the first family more determined to keep him in office, Rogers said. “The opposition is key to understanding him: they're what drives him. They reinforce how Biden thinks about himself. You can't get past obstacles unless other people get in your way, or if life gets in your way.”
Biden is nothing new about pushing through mountains of pain, whether it be personal tragedy or political humiliation. In his more than half-century in Washington, he has endured plenty of setbacks, including when many Democrats and pundits wrote him off in 2020. Biden, of course, ultimately won that race, defeating then-President Donald Trump.
The past week has made it clear that winning a rematch won't be easy: Trump is winning the polls despite false statements he made about the Jan. 6 debate, about abortion and about his own record.
Faiz Shakir, a top adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who managed Sanders' 2020 campaign when the Vermont senator ran against Biden for the Democratic nomination, said after the debate that Democrats were more wary of the possibility of Trump returning to the White House, despite their public support for a Biden presidency.
“I think there's a certain amount of anxiety behind the scenes while people are lining up behind him,” Shakir said. “Obviously, President Biden has to make a decision about whether or not he's going to continue with this campaign, and I hope he will, and if he does, I hope he's going to have to make some changes.”
Do you think Biden will be replaced at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this August? Think again. The president has already won almost all of the roughly 4,000 delegates. Unless Biden withdraws, the delegates are expected to vote for Biden in the first round.
So is there someone credibly working behind the scenes to revamp the Democratic nomination? “No,” Shakir said. “There are a lot of people looking ahead four years. At this point, this party is his. This nomination is his. And really, he's the only one who can chart the course for where he goes from here.”
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who supported Nikki Haley in the Republican primary but has since endorsed Trump, said, “For a while, you could make the argument that, 'We're supporting Donald Trump because it was hard for us as Republicans to defend him,' but today it's much harder to explain why Democrats would endorse Joe Biden.”
Trump has critics and he has challenges. New York criminal conviction sentencing date is JulyBut Sununu said Republicans are largely with him.
And after last week's debate, they're feeling better than ever.
Sununu also doesn't think any Democrats will run against Biden: “No. No one who's smart will. As much as they want a new candidate, I think they'll recognize that they had an opportunity and they missed it. They can only hope that they can get through this and that there's a second debate, that Biden does better, that Biden causes bigger problems.”
The day after the debate, the president, with his wife at his side, tried to reassure North Carolina Democrats: “Ladies and gentlemen, I don't walk as easily as I used to. I don't talk as smoothly as I used to. I don'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. I know how to get things done. And I know, as millions of Americans know, I can get knocked down and get back up.”
For now, Times reporter Katie Rogers notes, the Bidens seem confident Trump can pull off one more comeback, and perhaps the final campaign of his long career. “Both have become more aggressive when they sense the odds are stacked against him,” she said. “They see disability as part of Trump's long political career, almost tying it to his political brand. But age is not an obstacle, it's a test, and it's different from the problems Trump has faced in the past.”
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The story producer is Mark Hudspeth. The editors are Emanuele Secchi and Chad Cardin.
