Democrats discuss replacing Joe Biden on presidential ticket
US President’s halting debate performance spurs turmoil in the party over 2024 candidate.
US President Joe Biden’s halting performance against Donald Trump left the Democratic Party in turmoil, with allies ranging from lawmakers to wealthy donors discussing whether the 81-year-old should remain on the ticket even as a defiant Biden pressed on with his re-election campaign.
The 90-minute debate, watched by tens of millions of Americans, put Biden’s age, his biggest political vulnerability, on display like no other moment in his presidency. He stumbled over words, stammered through answers and trailed off without finishing sentences, forcing Democrats to publicly confront an issue that many had largely dismissed and some had fretted over privately.
Biden has no plans to drop out of the race, according to one of his senior advisers, and the President remains committed to the planned September debate with Trump. He returned to the campaign trail Friday, acknowledging his age but insisting he remained the right man to take on Trump.
“I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious. I don’t walk as easily as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to,” Biden said during a rally in Raleigh, N.C. “But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong and I know how to do this job.” Shaking his fist, he said, “When you get knocked down, you get back up.”
On Friday, multiple lawmakers said they were discussing how to move forward, following what most Democrats called a disappointing and alarming debate performance.
“I think we have some decisions to make as a party. We’ve got to have that discussion immediately,” Rep. Stephen Lynch (D., Mass.), one of the first members of Congress to endorse Biden in 2020. “I love him. He’s such a good and decent man, but that performance last night was dreadful.”
Rep. Susie Lee (D., Nev.), a vulnerable Democrat at risk of losing re-election this year, said she didn’t know whether another Democrat would be better positioned to beat Trump in November. But she said Democrats “absolutely” need to talk about how to move forward after the debate. “It was awful,” she said.
Focus on other top Democrats
The debacle put a spotlight on a handful of Democrats who were once seen as 2028 presidential hopefuls, but are now being whispered about as potential contenders to replace Biden. They include Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and Vice President Kamala Harris. Biden would need to step aside from the race in order for Democrats to replace him, given that he controls most of the party’s delegates headed into their August convention.
Whitmer, Newsom and Harris all expressed their support for Biden following the debate. Speaking at a campaign event Friday in Las Vegas, Harris offered a lengthy, forceful defence of Biden, encouraging voters to look beyond Thursday’s (Friday’s AEDT) debate and reminding them that Biden has beaten Trump before.
“This race will not be decided by one night in June, it will be decided by you,” she said.
Biden’s senior advisers pushed back forcefully on assertions from some Democrats that Biden should consider taking himself out of contention for the good of the party. Top White House and Biden campaign officials held one-on-one calls with key Democratic elected officials, donors and supporters to describe what they argued was a gap between what pundits were saying about the debate and what voters took away from it.
“We think there’s going to be a lot of twists and turns here,” the senior Biden adviser said. The official said the campaign’s data showed that persuadable voters supported Biden’s agenda and remained concerned by Trump’s continued denial of the 2020 election results, his backing of the repeal of Roe v. Wade and his defence of Jan. 6, 2021, rioters at the Capitol.
Some of Biden’s fiercest allies also said they were sticking with the President. “Those of us who are more interested in substance than style, we are still saying that on substance, Joe Biden is the best thing that has happened to this country in the last few years,” said Rep. James Clyburn (D., S.C.), whose support in 2020 put Biden on a trajectory to win the election.
But Clyburn, who said Biden dug himself into a hole in the debate, suggested that his support would have limits. “That was strike one,” he said. “You always get three strikes.”
The debate attracted 51.3 million viewers across all platforms, according to Nielsen data, a 30 per cent decline from the first presidential debate of 2020, which 73.1 million people tuned in to watch.
Democratic donors and strategists said they were still reeling from Biden’s debate showing. They acknowledged, however, that the chances of the President withdrawing remained slim.
There was little consensus on a plan forward, they said. Some tried to game out scenarios that could lead to a change at the top of the ticket, like high-ranking party officials, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) and House Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), publicly calling for Biden to step aside. But no such calls came as of Friday.
Some Biden allies said they felt a sense of resignation, knowing only a handful of people close to the President – including his family and his former boss, Barack Obama – had the power to do anything. On social media Friday, Obama said, “Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know,” while making clear that he still backed Biden.
Others expressed deep concern that Biden remaining on the ticket all but ensures Trump will win in November.
One senior Democrat said he had to turn off the TV several times during the debate. Another said Biden’s performance made even Trump, 78, who made apocalyptic claims and repeated falsehoods throughout the 90-minute event, look like a statesman.
Several advisers to prominent Democrats seen as potential presidential candidates in 2028 received messages from donors expressing their concerns about the President’s showing, according to people briefed on the discussions.
Prospect of open convention
If Biden were to withdraw before the Democrats’ national nominating convention, it would raise the prospect of an open convention, in which delegates would be free to abandon commitments made to Biden during the primary elections and to back a new nominee. If he were to withdraw after the convention, a special meeting of the Democratic National Committee would decide the party’s presidential ticket, according to the DNC’s rules.
Some White House officials privately made the case that Biden’s advisers spent too much time drilling him on talking points.
Others held out hope that the firestorm would blow over, arguing that the campaign never expected the race to turn on one event. One Biden adviser also said Biden’s circle is used to being counted out, noting that the President at one point faced calls to exit from the 2020 Democratic primary.
Two Democrats involved in 2024 races who were also stunned by Biden’s performance said they nonetheless expect the panic among Democrats to fade over the next couple of weeks. They predicted that polling numbers for Biden and down-ballot Democrats will suffer over the summer, but return to where they are now heading into the fall.
Biden’s campaign also argued that Trump’s performance was a turn-off to the independent voters who could decide the election, citing their own survey of voters in a Midwestern state. Biden’s campaign said it raised $US14 million on the day of Thursday’s debate and on Friday morning. A campaign official said the 11pm to midnight hour ET, one hour after the debate ended, was its best hour of fundraising since the campaign launched in April 2023.
For many voters, the debate was their first real exposure to Biden in recent months, given that he has kept a relatively muted public presence and that many voters pay little attention to politics. The onstage contest between two men who have served as president was likely to be the first event prompting less-interested voters to tune into the campaign.
Some undecided voters said they were concerned about Biden’s performance. “I was like, holy crap, he doesn’t have a whole lot of life or vigour in him – not for the most powerful man in the free world,” said Roman DeWitt, 27, of Phoenix.
DeWitt, who voted for Biden in 2020, said he would never vote for Trump. But he remains undecided on whether he would cast a ballot for Biden in November. “A vote for Biden is just a vote for the vice president,” said DeWitt, who said he doesn’t support Harris. “I’m just not confident in Biden’s ability to really make it another four years.” Laura Eklund, 49, of Elko, Nev., said she was surprised by how much Biden’s age showed.
Eklund – a Republican who has supported Democrats in the past and is undecided about how she will vote in November – said that if Biden were her father, “I would probably ask him not to proceed.” But Eklund said she wasn’t happy with Trump’s performance either. “I felt they both acted like children, unfortunately,” she said.
Age a central concern of voters
Polls have consistently found that voters believe both Biden and Trump are too old to serve as president, but that more feel Biden isn’t up to the job. Nearly three-quarters of voters said in a Wall Street Journal survey in February that Biden is too old to run for the presidency, and more than half said so of Trump.
One Biden donor called the president’s performance “very disappointing and disturbing.” The donor said it was so different from Biden’s vigorous State of the Union address. “Just can’t figure it out,” the donor said.
Prominent Democratic donor John Morgan, a Florida-based attorney, said he wasn’t calling for Biden to step aside, but he was sharply critical of the president’s senior aides for what he viewed as excessive preparation, which included days at Camp David.
Dow Jones Newswires
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