WASHINGTON: Joe Biden is “absolutely not” dropping out of the race for the White House, his spokesman said on Wednesday, as pressure mounts on the president following his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump.
Panic has gripped Democrats following last week's debate, and internal talk of finding a replacement candidate before the November election has been amplified by polls showing Trump widening his lead.
He New York Times and CNN reported that Biden, 81, had acknowledged to a key ally that his re-election bid was at stake if he failed to quickly reassure the public that he was still up to the job.
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre flatly rejected those reports and insisted that Biden had “absolutely” no intention of withdrawing as the Democratic nominee.
“The president has his eyes wide open and remains in the race,” he told reporters.
Biden admitted on a call with campaign and party staff that his rambling and unfocused responses to Trump had hurt him, multiple media outlets reported, but insisted he was in the race for the long haul.
“Let me say this as clearly as I can, as simply and directly as I can: I'm running… nobody is pushing me to drop out. I'm not leaving. I'm in this race to the end and we're going to win,” the veteran Democrat said, according to Politico.
Aftermath
The Biden campaign has been desperate to reassure Democratic donors and voters that the president's move against Trump was a one-off and not a fatal blow to his hopes for a second term.
But party leaders have expressed bewilderment at what they see as evasiveness and excuses from the president and his aides.
In Congress, lawmakers are seeing the Democrats' prospects of taking over the House of Representatives, retaining the Senate and returning to the White House fade away.
Concerns were compounded by a New York Times poll conducted after the debate that showed Trump with his largest lead over Biden: 49 percent to 43 percent of likely voters.
It wasn't until Wednesday, six days after the debate, that Biden completed a round of calls with Democratic congressional leaders, and staff members have been expressing dismay at the slow pace of outreach.
“We're getting to the point where it may not have been the debate that hurt him, but the consequences of how they handled it,” a senior Democratic official told Washington political outlet Axios.
Aware of growing alarm among the party's rank and file, Biden has scheduled a meeting with all 23 Democratic governors on Wednesday night and will visit the key states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in the coming days.
His ability to think quickly and articulate a coherent vision may be tested when he sits down with ABC News on Friday for his first interview since the debate.
'More worrying'
The president has cited fatigue as a new explanation for his poor debate performance, saying he had been reckless in traveling “around the world a couple of times” before the debate and “almost fell asleep on stage.”
But he had returned to the United States almost two weeks ago and spent two days resting and six preparing for the debate.
The Times said people who interacted with the president found his mental confusion “was becoming more frequent, more pronounced and more troubling.”
Democratic lawmakers have begun to publicly express their doubts, with two saying Tuesday they expected Biden to lose to Trump in November and another calling for him to drop out of the White House race.
On the street where the president grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, there was sympathy for Biden, but no campaign signs for either candidate.
“I felt embarrassed for him. I felt like he wasn't feeling well and he probably shouldn't have gone on stage and he probably took the worst of the two options,” said his grandmother Jamie Hayes, 73.
