How Biden is restarting his campaign as he's probably not going anywhere

President Biden's widely criticized debate performance Thursday night in Atlanta left many prominent Democrats asking a simple question:

What do we do now?

Replacing Biden with someone else likely won't be possible unless he himself drops out of the race. Biden has secured the necessary number of delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination, and on Friday Biden said at a rally that he was in the race to win. So now strategists and donors are thinking about how the 81-year-old can restart his campaign and take on former President Trump.

Some said the president needed to take a moment to assess the damage. Others said it was important for him to increase his campaign travel schedule, make more media availability and emphasize that he has always been an underdog. Some added that he needed to recognize his age and what Father Time has accomplished instead of acting like age isn't an issue.

Finally, there was broad agreement that Biden needs to focus on a message that contrasts his values ​​with those of Trump, whom he describes as vain and vindictive.

“There are bad debate nights,” former President Obama wrote in X. “Believe me, I know. 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.”

Biden missed an opportunity to hit that note on Thursday, several strategists said. They wanted him to choose an issue like reproductive rights or the economy, for example, and focus much more on how Americans would be worse off if Trump returned to the White House. They want him to do the same in the future.

The president's campaign “definitely needs more to offer clarity about the broader message they're trying to get across regarding Trump and how horrible he is,” said Democratic strategist Bill Carrick.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) said Biden remains best positioned to lead the Democratic Party and that his past ability to overcome setbacks, tragedies and adversity offers a guide for how he should approach this moment.

Khanna, a frequent Biden surrogate on the campaign trail, suggested the president hold a rally on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art to evoke the image of Sylvester Stallone running up them in the iconic moment from the movie “Rocky.”

Biden has always considered himself an underdog and that shouldn't change now, Khanna said. Thursday night's debate wasn't Biden's best performance, the congressman said, but he doesn't define it.

“Rocky wasn't the most eloquent, but he was a fighter, and his eloquence was his character. I think that's the phrase we should use: that Biden's eloquence is his character,” Khanna told The Times.

“He needs to embrace the role of the underdog. He needs to embrace his role of having been knocked down in life and getting back up,” Khanna said. “He’s not going to be a John F. Kennedy. He’s not going to be an Obama. He’s not going to be a Reagan. But he can be a Truman. He can be a Johnson. He can be a fighter.”

Being among Americans right now is essential, Khanna added, suggesting Biden tour the Midwest and meet with blue-collar workers and small business owners.

Biden has held very few sit-down interviews or news conferences since taking office. This year he skipped the traditional Super Bowl halftime interview. In his first three years in office, Biden held 33 press conferences, half as many as Obama and fewer than Trump's 52 during the same period, according to The American Presidency Project at UC Santa Barbara.

On Thursday night, the criticism of President Biden that came in after the 90 minutes were generally bad, with one accompanied by seven exploding head emojis. Even his allies acknowledged that he didn’t look like he was at his best.

It was “a bad night for Trump, but a worse night for Biden,” Christine Pelosi, a Democratic National Committee delegate and daughter of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said in a text message.

Biden “needs a correct course and a timely, lengthy unscripted interview to show that this was a terrible debate, like Obama and Reagan had in their first re-election debates, and not an ongoing condition,” he said.

One striking element of Biden’s performance on Thursday was that it differed from his energetic and forceful State of the Union address in March. Biden was so forceful that Trump and other Republicans suggested the president had been “drugged” into performing so well.

But in the debate, Biden sounded hoarse and sometimes struggled to complete sentences. Trump also spoke incoherently at times and, as fact-checkers noted, lied repeatedly. But Trump also spoke with more confidence, and the contrast in energy — Trump sped up, Biden paused — surprised many viewers.

CNN announced that the debate had an average of 51.3 million television viewers on Thursday. The data does not include the online audience.

“I am very fond of 'Joey Biden'. But I think it's very possible that he has done existential damage to himself and to those of us who understand how effective a president he has been,” said Joey Kaempfer, a real estate developer who has donated heavily to Democrats over the years. the years. He has donated nearly $1 million to groups supporting Biden's re-election and has dined with the president.

“We have to be patient and see how it evolves over the next week or two,” he said. “But yes, I am very worried.”

At a rally Friday in North Carolina, Biden appeared to heed some of this advice, particularly from those who said he needed to more thoroughly address the fact that he would be the oldest president in history at the end of his second term. He made his points with more enthusiasm and clarity than he had the night before, and sounded more convincing.

Biden continued to attack the lies and lack of empathy Trump espoused in the debate — pointing to his comments on abortion, immigration and respect for democracy — and contrasting them with the accomplishments of his administration's first term. He also referred to his age.

“I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious,” Biden said Friday. “I don’t walk as easily as I used to. I don’t speak as 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 millions of Americans know, that when you get knocked down, you get back up.”

Biden at one point touted his relationships with all world leaders, “because I've been there, as you say.” [of] I’ve noticed,” which sparked laughter from the crowd. Exuding energy and not being defensive seemed to endear him to his supporters and put him on a good path after the disastrous debate.

“Even with a big speech today, which I think is a good start, he needs many, many of them, and he needs many, many substitutes over the course of this,” former Republican strategist Matthew Dowd said on MSNBC.

The next debate is 75 days away, he added, meaning it will be a long time before many people tune into politics again. That's a problem for Biden, Dowd said.

As if to address concerns about his stamina, Biden also attended two events Friday in New York City. The Associated Press reported that he joined Elton John at the opening of a visitor center at Stonewall National Monument and later attended a Pride Month fundraiser.

President Biden listens as Elton John speaks Friday at the grand opening ceremony of the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center in New York City's Greenwich Village.

(Julia Nikhinson/Associated Press)

This was one of the first presidential debates in recent political history. Many analysts said it would focus voters' attention on the race sooner and offer Biden a chance to change its trajectory.

Analysts had theorized that the Biden campaign also wanted an early debate because it would give him more time to repair any damage caused by a poor performance. That will now be put to the test.

Times staff writers Seema Mehta and Noah Bierman contributed to this report.