President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump went to the debate stage in Atlanta last Thursday night.
Biden supporters hoped the debate would prove to be a turning point for the president’s struggling re-election campaign. But, in front of a television audience of nearly 50 million American voters, those hopes quickly fell apart.
From the start, Biden seemed nervous; his voice was hoarse, and his answers were difficult to understand.
On several occasions, the president’s answers appeared incoherent and difficult to follow.
When asked about abortion, the president began speaking about women who have been assaulted by immigrants. When asked about taxes, he ended a meandering answer with the line “we beat Medicare”.
At one point, he turned the subject to his golf handicap, insisting he’d beat Trump in a game of golf.
And even as former president Trump made a total of at least 30 inaccurate statements, Biden struggled to effectively call him to account.
Biden’s stumble overshadows Trump’s lies and racism on the stage
By Friday morning, the headlines were not about Trump’s lies, or even the former president’s racist statements about Palestinians or “Black jobs”. Instead, they were entirely about President Biden’s performance and, more pointedly, whether or not he should be the Democrats’ nominee.
Biden’s allies quickly rallied around him, reaffirming their support for the president by making clear the threat Trump poses to the country.
“Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know,” said former president Barack Obama. “But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself.”
“Last night didn’t change that,” Obama continued, “and it’s why so much is at stake in November.”
Others, like Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, were harsher in their rebuke of the backlash against Biden.
“I refuse to join the Democratic vultures on Biden’s shoulder after the debate,” Fetterman wrote on Twitter (X), adding, “Chill the fuck out.”
New York Times editorial board calls for president to step aside
But despite Biden’s allies coming to his defense, calls for him to drop out have continued to grow.
US Today reported that prominent Democratic donors were discussing how to move forward from the disaster on the debate stage. Strategists close to other prominent Democrats who are seen as future presidential candidates told POLITICO they were “bombarded with text messages” pleading for an alternative option.
And by Friday evening, the New York Times editorial board published a piece outright urging Biden to step down.
With two months until the convention, it appears unlikely Biden will step aside. He continues to believe, according to his inner circle, that as the only person who has defeated Trump, he is the best positioned to do it again.
In their editorial, The New York Times disagreed.
“Mr. Biden has said that he is the candidate with the best chance of taking on this threat of tyranny and defeating it,” the editorial board wrote.
“His argument rests largely on the fact that he beat Mr. Trump in 2020. That is no longer a sufficient rationale for why Mr. Biden should be the Democratic nominee this year.”
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