President Biden rejected calls Friday from allies considering withdrawing from his reelection bid, following Thursday's weak debate performance with a firmly stated pledge to defeat former President Trump.
“I give you my word as Biden: I would not run again if I didn’t believe with all my heart and soul that I could do this job,” he said at a boisterous rally in North Carolina with his wife, Jill Biden, as Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down” played behind him.
The display of determination, including his ability to project his voice and crack jokes while reading from a teleprompter, presented a completely different image of the president than during Thursday night's debate, where he stammered hoarsely, often lost his thread. his thoughts and failed. to refute many of Trump's false talking points and claims.
“I know I'm not a young man, to state the obvious,” Biden, 81, said Friday. “I don't walk as easily as before. I don't speak that fluently. 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, as do millions of Americans,” he continued. “When you get knocked down, you get back up.”
The speech is unlikely to calm concerns among independent voters and many of Biden's allies that he botched the debate, by far his greatest chance to dispel doubts about his age and mental acuity.
He woke up Friday to a stream of liberal columnists, Democratic operatives and his favorite television host questioning whether he should drop out of the presidential race after a debate performance that focused attention on his advanced age.
“If you were a CEO and you performed like that, would any corporation in America, any Fortune 500 corporation in America, keep you as CEO?” Joe Scarborough asked during a tough opening monologue on his MSNBC show “Morning Joe.”
The question before Biden is momentous. He and other Democrats have called Trump an existential threat to democracy, and many of those calling for Biden to step aside cited the importance of keeping Trump out of the White House as their primary concern, even as many defended Biden’s job performance beyond the debate.
Party rules make it virtually impossible to replace Biden without his consent, and he showed little indication Friday that he would back out. Even if Biden changes his mind, it presents a host of risks and hurdles, including deciding on a replacement at a brokered convention and selling a new nominee to the American public in a two-and-a-half-month period.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the most obvious heir apparent, has struggled in the polls alongside Biden. Other potential replacements include California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who have not been tested on the national stage.
“It is not clear that by panicking and pressuring Biden, [Democrats] “We will be in a better position,” said Gil Duran, a former aide to Harris and other Democrats. “Then the narrative becomes, 'Oh my God, this has never been done before, the Democrats are making a historic mistake, no one changes course midstream.' There’s really no way to win.”
The question on Friday was whether those close to Biden would urge him to make that decision and whether he would listen to them if they did.
In the immediate aftermath, even his closest allies acknowledged that he had struggled. “There are bad debate nights. Believe me, I know,” former President Obama wrote on the social media platform X. “But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary people his entire life and someone who only cares about himself.”
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) said he didn't know whether the party should urge Biden to withdraw, but he didn't close the door either, urging thoughtful discussion even though he admitted there isn't much time.
“There is nothing simple about this,” he said in an interview. “Everyone has to figure this out the best way they can. And I think it’s very important to take some time to get things back in perspective.”
He regretted that Biden had not been able to refute Trump's “fire hose of lies and tremendously extreme statements.”
“I hope he’s out there bringing all the energy and good messages he can,” Huffman added of Biden. “We had a tough night last night, and it was one of the most chaotic and unpleasant presidential debates I’ve ever seen, probably the worst.”
Biden hoped to erase bad reviews with the campaign rally in North Carolina, projecting an optimistic signal that his campaign was trying to expand the electoral map. The last time the reliably Republican state voted for a Democrat was when Obama ran in 2008. But recent elections have been close: Trump beat Biden there by 1.3 percentage points in 2020.
But even before the debate, the travel schedules of the Biden and Trump campaigns indicated vulnerability for the incumbent. Harris was scheduled to address Latino voters in Nevada on Friday, while Trump headed to Virginia. Both states last voted for a Republican to win the White House in 2004, indicating that the Trump campaign is trying to grow its electoral map while Harris is trying to shore up a Democratic state where the presumptive Republican nominee has been leading in the polls for months.
Following the debate, the Biden campaign appeared to deliver a concerted message acknowledging that the president's performance was lackluster, while also pointing to the many falsehoods Trump uttered during the debate.
“Look, he had a bad night,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat and Biden campaign representative, said on Fox News. “It is up to us to go out and show that the country is moving in the right direction, compared to what you saw from the former president, which is a list of complaints.”
Trump told Fox News Digital that he also did not expect Biden to withdraw.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said. “No one else could have done it better.”
Aides who spoke anonymously sought to downplay the confrontation with Trump, who they say won on substantive issues, pointing out that debates rarely influence polls. And some Democrats publicly urged their party colleagues to stay the course.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York offered a terse “no” when asked by reporters if Biden should withdraw.
“Republicans are like Tammy Wynette, they stand by their men,” said Elizabeth Ashford, a California political consultant who has advised Harris and others. “And if Democrats want to win in November, we need to do the same.”
Christine Pelosi, a longtime delegate to the Democratic National Convention and daughter of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), former speaker of the House of Representatives, doubts Biden will withdraw but said he must act quickly to change perceptions. that created in the debate.
“A course correction is needed and a timely, lengthy, unscripted interview is offered to demonstrate that this was a terrible debate — as Obama and Reagan were in their first re-election debates — and not a continuing condition,” he said in a text message.
