Democrats were panicking. Donors were despondent. And some elected officials were privately wondering whether their leader should step aside.<\/p>\n
But in President Biden\u2019s cosseted bubble over the past five days, his 90-minute debate stage meltdown Thursday night against former president Donald Trump was merely a \u201cbad night,\u201d with aides quickly retreating to what they hoped was a fail-safe mantra: But Trump is worse!<\/p>\n
Campaign officials touted their record fundraising on debate day. White House officials promised that Biden would bounce back at his upcoming North Carolina rally. And Jen O\u2019Malley Dillon, the campaign chair, told nervous donors at the Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta on Friday that \u201cnothing fundamentally changed in the race.\u201d<\/p>\n
By Tuesday, however, the business-as-usual calm the Biden team sought to impose had backfired, with some Democrats complaining of being gaslit.<\/p>\n
Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.) became the first Democratic member of Congress to defect, calling for Biden to drop out of the race, and other Democrats publicly urged Biden to more seriously address his fitness for the job. Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) opened the door to a post-Biden election, saying on MSNBC that he would support Vice President Harris were Biden to step aside.<\/p>\n
The public developments represented a striking contrast from the four days after Biden\u2019s halting 2024 debate debut, when his inner circle and campaign team publicly emitted a steady stream of denialism and don\u2019t-believe-your-lying-eyes happy talk, arguing that the 81-year-old president \u2014 noticeably slower and physically aged than four years ago \u2014 is still the best candidate to defeat Trump in November.<\/p>\n
\u201cJoe isn\u2019t just the right person for the job,\u201d first lady Jill Biden said at a fundraiser Saturday in East Hampton, N.Y. \u201cHe\u2019s the only person for the job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Officials said his post-debate swing re-energized donors and voters, pointing to his $38 million fundraising haul in the days after and his packed rally in Raleigh, N.C. They also noted Biden\u2019s top aides made a flurry of private calls to top elected Democrats and donors, to stave off defections and reiterate that Biden had no plans to exit the race.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve always said this was going to be a close race and a tough campaign, and we\u2019re working incredibly hard to earn every single vote, and taking nothing for granted,\u201d Lauren Hitt, a spokeswoman for the campaign, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
But during the four-state swing after the debate \u2014 during which he inaugurated a visitor center at the Stonewall National Monument and attended three fundraisers \u2014 Biden\u2019s traveling entourage operated with a breezy, nothing-to-see-here attitude, as if pantomiming a thriving campaign not in the midst of an existential crisis.<\/p>\n
A top aide to the first lady danced as Diana Ross blared on the tarmac in Raleigh in the wee hours of Friday. Mike Donilon, a longtime confidant to the president and chief strategist of his campaign, eschewed a suit for casual summer wear: a seersucker short-sleeve, button-down shirt and suede horsebit loafers. And aides scoffed at reporters when they asked the president whether he planned to drop out.<\/p>\n
Two of Biden\u2019s granddaughters joined him for the final day of the swing, before they reunited with the rest of the Biden clan ahead of a scheduled family photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz at Camp David \u2014 a tableau that, as party leaders privately fretted about a second Trump term ushering in the end of American democracy, had echoes of Nero fiddling while Rome burned.<\/p>\n
But as Democratic strategists, elected officials and liberal pundits publicly and privately called for \u2014 at the very least \u2014 a serious discussion about whether Biden should step aside, he and his campaign instead offered business-as-usual spin.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a familiar story: Following Thursday night\u2019s debate, the Beltway class is counting Joe Biden out,\u201d Dillon wrote in an email blasted out Saturday evening. \u201cThe data in the battleground states, though, tells a different story.\u201d<\/p>\n
But a sentence about polling later in Dillon\u2019s memo belied her studied nonchalance, seeming to acknowledge that Biden might very well drop in the polls as voters continue to process Biden\u2019s debate stage performance: \u201cIf we do see changes in polling in the coming weeks, it will not be the first time that overblown media narratives have driven temporary dips in the polls,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n
Shortly after Dillon\u2019s memo, deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty also sent out an email full of \u201chelpful\u201d responses to help calm nervous Democrats.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re like me, you\u2019re getting lots of texts or calls from folks about the state of the race after Thursday. Maybe it was your panicked aunt, your MAGA uncle, or some self-important Podcasters,\u201d Flaherty wrote, before offering such suggested talking points as \u201cthe long-term impact of debates is overstated anyway\u201d and \u201c90 minutes does not negate 3-\u00bd years of results.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Biden operation appears to think it has no choice but to proceed as if his meandering debate performance \u2014 his voice was frail, his thoughts were garbled, and he failed to meaningfully fact-check Trump \u2014 was merely an aberration.<\/p>\n
To even entertain the criticism ricocheting around their party would be to tacitly acknowledge what many Democratic voters have long feared and what some officials and strategists have long whispered: that Biden is too old to run for a second term, and that he should have kept his promise to serve as a \u201cbridge\u201d to the next generation and bowed out in time for a vigorous Democratic primary.<\/p>\n
Now, however, Biden\u2019s team finds itself taking what Democratic critics point to as hubris and selfishness and repackaging it as resilience.<\/p>\n
Inside Biden\u2019s inner circle, the latest round of criticism \u2014 particularly from editorial boards and pundits \u2014 is being dismissed as the standard underestimation of Biden\u2019s ability. Aides have been quick to remind anxious allies and donors of when Democrats said Biden needed to drop out of the Democratic primary in 2020 after losing badly in Iowa and New Hampshire before going on to win the nomination and defeat Trump. And they have also noted that Biden, who has suffered great personal tragedy, has weathered much tougher times and will bounce back.<\/p>\n
As evidence, they pointed to his boisterous rally in Raleigh the day after the debate \u2014 where an adoring crowd of more than 2,000 people cheered for him and Biden delivered a fierce defense of his ability to serve as president.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don\u2019t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth,\u201d Biden said. \u201cI know right from wrong. And I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Biden campaign is also trying to stay focused on their original theory of the case \u2014 that this election needs to be a referendum on the former president, not the sitting one.<\/p>\n
During the debate itself, for instance, almost three-quarters of Biden\u2019s social media posts mentioned Trump, while other left-wing political influencers posted more frequently about how old Biden appeared and critiqued his performance, according to a Washington Post analysis of social media posts, podcasts and other public statements.<\/p>\n
In the days after the debate, the trend continued. More than half of Biden\u2019s social media posts about the debate focused on Trump and his performance, while only a few addressed Biden\u2019s own age.<\/p>\n
The Biden strategy of happy talk, however, comes with risks, making the president and his team seem out of touch with reality.<\/p>\n
Hilary Rosen, a longtime Democratic strategist, said she thinks the Biden operation \u201cwould have been better off sticking with honesty.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t tell people they didn\u2019t see what they saw,\u201d Rosen said. \u201cTo try to turn this around and try to make it be everybody else\u2019s fault \u2014 it\u2019s not only offensive, it just isn\u2019t going to fly.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Democrats were panicking. Donors were despondent. And some elected officials were privately wondering whether their leader should step aside. But in President Biden\u2019s cosseted bubble over the past five days, his 90-minute debate stage meltdown Thursday night against former president Donald Trump was merely a \u201cbad night,\u201d with aides quickly retreating to what they hoped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5800,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}