After the debate disaster: Alarm bells rise in volume, but Biden defies calls to bow out

PRESIDENT Joe Biden’s stumbling television debate on CNN on Thursday (Jun 27) has raised two major questions: Can the Democratic presidential candidate recover from the setback? And if not, what should his political party do about it?

Recall that Biden’s aides were the ones who pressed for an early debate that would function as the formal kick-off of the presidential campaign, replacing Labor Day. Their overriding goal was to dispel doubts that their candidate was too old and frail to lead the United States for another four years.

Instead, the debate that was watched by more than 50 million viewers only helped to reinforce those doubts about whether he would be up to serving four more years in office.

Biden may have lost the debate in the first 10 minutes when he failed to speak clearly; things didn’t get much better the rest of the evening with his many stumbles, mixed-up words, pauses and blank stares.

Sometimes the president couldn’t even complete a coherent sentence or he finished it with a spiral, such as when he responded to a question about tax reform and healthcare: “Making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do, with, the, uh, with the Covid, excuse me, with, um, dealing with, everything we had to do with, uh... look… if – we finally beat Medicare.”

President Biden’s faltering effort proved to be an unmitigated disaster for himself and for his campaign, allowing former president Donald Trump to “win” the debate despite his own pedestrian performance. True to form, Trump lied his way through the evening, making statement after statement that had little or no basis in facts, such as his suggestion that illegal immigrants are entitled to government pension and healthcare. He also declined, again, to state that he would accept the results of the November election if he loses.

Biden’s debate performance sparked panic among Democratic officials and donors who expressed concern that if the election were held tomorrow, Trump could win in a landslide, and wondered whether they should replace the 81-year-old with a stronger candidate to beat Trump.

In theory, with the election four months away, the president has time to recover. His aides insisted that Biden, nursing a cold, only had a “bad night”, just as many other presidential candidates did in past election campaigns but who then went on to win the election.

Indeed, Biden tried on Friday to beat back doubts about his fitness following the disjointed debate performance the previous night, with an energetic speech during a spirited rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, as he fired up a crowd of supporters that responded with chants of “Joe! Joe!”.

But can Biden overcome the damage he did to his candidacy and persuade enough voters to forget what they witnessed with their own eyes on Thursday and conclude that, indeed, he has the physical and mental stamina to defeat Trump and serve another term?

Or, as he put it during the rally on Friday, casting the election as a choice between right and wrong, an honest man and a convicted criminal: “I don’t speak smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. And I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done. And I know what millions of Americans know – when you get knocked down, you get back up.”

But it is doubtful that with the political stakes sky-high, President Biden’s comeback on Friday would dispel the fears among many Democrats. Against the backdrop of opinion polls showing that even before the debate Trump had a lead in major battleground states, these Democrats are alarmed at the prospect of the former president returning to the White House and are now thinking hard about whether they need to replace the candidate at the top of the ticket.

Hence the talk in Washington about the possibility of President Biden stepping aside before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, with pundits asking whether some Democrats would go to him to urge him to quit the race and whether he can be replaced at the convention in August. And who would replace him?

Names of several potential contenders have been raised in recent days, with Vice-President Kamala Harris – whose public approval ratings are as weak as Biden’s – leading the list.

Other names that are being mentioned include four governors: Gavin Newsom (California); Josh Shapiro (Pennsylvania); Gretchen Whitmer (Michigan); and JB Pritzker (Illinois).

But the conventional wisdom is that persuading Biden to step down will not be easy, if not impossible.

A proud and stubborn man, Biden is after all the leader of the Democratic Party who has gained the support of enough delegates to win the party’s presidential nomination in August.

He and members of his family, led by First Lady Jill Biden, remain confident that he will beat Trump in November and are likely to refuse to budge. In that case, the Democrats will not be in a position to force him to bow out of the race before or during the convention.

Moreover, a perception that Biden’s position is shaky and that he is in danger of facing a revolt within the Democratic Party would only erode public support for him and make it even more likely that he would lose the election in November. Democrats may not be willing to take that risk.

And in the unlikely scenario that Biden agrees to withdraw from the race, the Democratic Party doesn’t have a mechanism in place to elect a new candidate in the form of an open convention. And there is certainly not enough time and resources to hold new primaries.

If anything, if Biden does decide to step aside, there will be a risk of chaos, if not a political bloodbath, within the Democratic Party. Vice-President Harris regards herself as heir-apparent and would resist any challenge to the first female and non-white VP, in particular from white men such as governors Newsom and Pritzker.

Both presidential campaigns are awaiting now the results of the first post-debate opinion poll. But the expectation is that President Biden’s approval rating will not rise above the upper-30s (if not dip further), while Trump would probably enjoy a post-debate bounce, amounting to bad news for the Democrats.

If Biden were to fall further behind, panic among the Democrats would grow to a show of terror and the alarm siren would be shrill.