Democrats fail to agree on substitute for Joe Biden

Donald Trump challenges embattled Joe Biden to another debate and a game of golf.

Joe Biden addresses the NATO summit in Washington on Tuesday. Picture: AFP

The push to replace Joe Biden before the election has eased, largely because congressional Democarts were unable to reach a consensus on an alternative to the President on Tuesday .

Donald Trump challenged Mr Biden to another “man to man” debate – and a game of golf – during a campaign rally in Florida, as the embattled President tried to put on a coherent, confident performance at the 75th anniversary NATO summit in Washington.

Mr Trump, returning to the campaign trail after almost two weeks of relative absence since his victorious performance in Atlanta, said mockingly that another debate would give Mr Biden a chance to “redeem himself in front of the entire world”.

“Let’s do another debate this week so that sleepy Joe Biden can prove to everyone all over the world that he has what it takes to be president,” he said in Doral, where he featured alongside senator Marco Rubio, a top ­contender to be his vice-presidential pick.

Mr Trump, revelling in the President’s poor performance at the Atlanta debate on June 27, which plunged the Democratic Party into crisis, also challenged him to an 18-hole game of golf.

“I will even give Joe Biden 10 strokes a side. That’s a lot … If he wins, I will give the charity of his choice $1m,” he added, a challenge the Biden campaign team promptly rejected.

The President has remained defiant, insisting in TV and radio interviews and leaked conversations with colleagues that he won’t be standing aside, including in a lengthy letter to Democratic Party members of congress that emerged on Monday.

While at least 11 Democrat representatives and three senators have publicly called on the President to step aside, the party’s congressional representatives in Washington were unable to coalesce around an alternative to Mr Biden during lengthy meetings.

Asked if the party were on the same page as he was leaving the meeting, Democrat congressman Steve Cohen said: “We’re not even in the same book.”

Another unnamed congressman told a Washington reporter “it felt like a funeral”.

There were signs Mr Biden has firmed up support, with several members walking past rows of reporters and declaring their allegiance to the President.

Jerry Nadler, the ranking Democrat on the house judiciary committee, backed Mr Biden despite having reportedly said at the weekend that he should step aside.

“He said he’s going to remain in, he’s our candidate, we’re all going to support him – hopefully,” he said.

Speculation about the President’s future overshadowed attention on the NATO summit, where Mr Biden sought to rally the 32 nation alliance around continued support for Ukraine.

Mr Biden’s campaign to reassure voters and his own party of his competence has had mixed results, as calls among senior Democrats for him to step aside and make way for another candidate, potentially Vice-President Kamala Harris, increased.

After the longest-serving Democrat senator, Patty Murray, on Monday urged the President to “seriously consider” his future, her colleague in the upper house Michael Bennet said the party “could lose the whole thing and it’s staggering to me”.

“Donald Trump is on track, I think, to win this election – and maybe win it by a landslide – and take with him the Senate and the house,” he told CNN.

The former president’s former Republican challenger Nikki Haley forcefully threw her weight behind Mr Trump, issuing a statement that released the delegates she had won ahead of the Republican nominating convention to be held in Milwaukee next week to vote for the 78-year-old.

“The nominating convention is a time for Republican unity. Joe Biden is not competent to serve a second term and Kamala Harris would be a disaster for America,” she said on social media.

Polls and political betting markets suggest Mr Biden has lost significant public support since the debate as previously supportive mainstream media outlets turn on the 81-year-old.

ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos, who interviewed Mr Biden last week as part of the White House’s campaign to reassure voters of his competence, told a reporter with a hidden camera on the streets of New York City on Tuesday that he did not think the President could serve another four years. “Earlier today I responded to a question from a passer-by; I shouldn’t have,” the anchor said in a subsequent statement. “George expressed his own point of view and not the position of ABC News,” Disney news, owner of ABC, said later.