US President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden step off Air Force One upon arrival at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, New York on 28 June 2024. (Mandel Ngan/AFP)
- Joe Biden aimed to recover from a poor debate performance
against Donald Trump with a passionate speech. - Biden maintains he is the right choice for president,
supported by his party and figures like Barack Obama. - The reaction to the debate has affected Biden’s standing
with voters and election bettors, with his chances of winning the November
election perceived to have significantly decreased.
A fired-up
Joe Biden came out swinging Friday as he tried to make up for a disastrous
debate performance against Donald Trump, insisting he was the right man to win
November’s US presidential election.
Biden’s
appearance at a campaign rally in the battleground state of North Carolina came
amid rumblings in his alarmed Democratic Party about replacing the 81-year-old
as their nominee — and shortly before the nation’s most influential newspaper
urged him to step aside.
“I
don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I
don’t debate as well as I used to,” Biden admitted to supporters in
unusually confessional remarks.
“But I
know how to tell the truth. I know how to do this job,” he said to huge
cheers, vowing, “When you get knocked down, you get back up.”
Biden’s
team was in damage-control mode after Thursday’s debate when he often
hesitated, tripped over words and lost his train of thought – exacerbating
fears about his ability to serve another term.
He had
hoped to allay qualms about his advanced age and to expose Trump as a habitual
liar.
But the
president failed to counter his bombastic rival, who offered up a largely
unchallenged reel of false or misleading statements about everything from the
economy to immigration.
On Friday,
Biden delivered the lines Democrats wished they had heard in the televised
debate.
“Did
you see Trump last night? My guess is he set – and I mean this sincerely – a
new record for the most lies told in a single debate,” Biden said.
“Donald
Trump is a genuine threat to this nation. He’s a threat to our freedom. He’s a
threat to our democracy. He’s literally a threat for everything America stands
for.”
READ | Biden delivers shaky performance under Trump’s barrage of falsehoods at first debate
Trump also
returned to the campaign trail Friday, speaking at a rally in Virginia and
launching his familiar attacks on Biden in a rambling speech.
“It’s
not his age, it’s his competence,” Trump said.
“The
question every voter should be asking themselves today is not whether Joe Biden
can survive a 90-minute debate performance, but whether America can survive
four more years of crooked Joe Biden.”
A new Democrat?
Trump
addressed the chances of Biden being replaced by another candidate, saying,
“I don’t really believe that because he does better in polls than any of
the (other) Democrats.”
So far, no
senior Democratic figure has publicly called on Biden to withdraw, with most
toeing a party line about sticking with the existing ticket.
“I
will never turn my back on President Biden,” California Governor Gavin
Newsom, who has figured prominently on lists of possible replacement
candidates, said immediately after the debate.
Forcing a
change in the ticket would be politically fraught, and Biden would have to
decide himself to withdraw to make way for another nominee before the party
convention next month.
Biden
overwhelmingly won the primary votes, and the party’s 3 900 delegates heading
to the convention in Chicago are beholden to him.
If he
exits, the delegates would have to find a replacement.
“Bad
debate nights happen,” Biden’s former boss, Barack Obama, wrote on X.
But the
election is “still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary
folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself.”
A logical –
but not automatic – candidate to take Biden’s place would be his vice
president, Kamala Harris, who also loyally defended his debate performance.
The show of
Democratic loyalty and Biden’s defiance in North Carolina were not enough for
The New York Times, however.
The daily
newspaper slammed Biden’s campaign as a “reckless gamble” in the face
of the threat posed by Trump, with its editorial board – which is separate from
the newsroom – calling for the president to stand aside.
The
“greatest public service Mr. Biden can now perform is to announce that he
will not continue to run for re-election,” it said.
Many
election bettors, too, abandoned Biden, preferring to bet on Trump or other
Democratic leaders.
Before the
debate, bettors on the platform Smarkets were giving Biden a 35 percent chance
of winning in November, but on Friday that figure dropped to below 20 percent.
A second
debate is scheduled for 10 September.
Discussion about this post