McCaskill says Biden stumbles raise question of Harris or Newsom at top of Democratic ticket

Former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said President Biden’s lackluster performance at Thursday night’s debate raises the question of why Vice President Harris or California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) is not at the top of the Democratic ticket for 2024.

“Those two people are signaling to a whole lot of Americans who are paying attention, ‘How come they are not at the top of the ticket?’” McCaskill said in an interview with Rachel Maddow on MSNBC after the debate. “How come the Democratic party does not have them at the top of the ticket, instead of using them to shore up some pretty glaring weaknesses in our president?” 

Biden faced off against former President Trump at a CNN-hosted debate in Atlanta. Within the first 30 minutes of the debate, Democrats began to panic over Biden’s lackluster performance. Rambling at times, Biden appeared to have a sore throat and lost his train of thought repeatedly. Trump, meanwhile, made a number of inaccurate claims but was forceful and direct in speaking.

A snap CNN poll showed that 67 percent of watchers believed Trump won the debate, while only 33 percent believed Biden had won. In contrast, during the 2020 debate, when Trump repeatedly interrupted and talked over Biden and the moderator, 60 percent believed Biden had won the debate.

“Joe Biden had one thing he had to do tonight, and he didn’t do it,” McCaskill said. “He had one thing he had to accomplish, and that was reassure America that he was up to the job at his age. And he failed at that tonight.” 

McCaskill did not explicitly call for Biden’s removal when Maddow pushed her, saying, “I honestly don’t know what the solution is.”

“I don’t know that,” she said. “I think we’ll know a lot more in a few weeks how this plays out, how the polling plays out, but it I think a couple of things are going on right now. I think I’m not the only one whose heart is breaking right now.”

“There’s a lot of people who watch this tonight and felt terribly for Joe Biden, and you have to ask, how did we get here? How do we get to the point that we’re spending a whole lot of time talking about the vice president tonight, instead of talking about the president. And I don’t know how the rest of this story is written; I don’t know if things can be done to fix this,” she added. 

She added that her phone was blowing up with Democrats and senior donors, some of them in high elected office, who were deeply concerned with what they had watched. 

She also slammed Trump, calling him “a liar, a flawed character, mean, a jerk,” and “very unlikable.” However, she added that the debate was like “a gut punch” to many Americans because of how “dangerous” Trump would be as president.

McCaskill said she hopes in the coming days that Biden’s senior advisers and family have serious conversation with him about how to “better exude strength,” or other alternatives.