Democratic strategists and party insiders say President Biden’s postdebate crisis response has been as damaging to his chances of beating former President Trump in November as the disastrous debate performance itself.
They say there’s little Biden can do to change the narrative short of dropping out of the race, a view that is shared by a majority of Democratic senators and a large number of Democratic House members.
Gaffes Biden made at the NATO summit and in interviews with George Stephanopoulos and Black Entertainment Television, the waning support of media stalwarts such as MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, and the worsening divisions within the Democratic Party have only solidified the prevailing view that Biden can’t beat Trump.
Growing pessimism about Biden’s candidacy has fueled a new round of calls from Democratic lawmakers for him to drop out of the race to avoid a potential disaster in November.
Democratic strategists say those calls will multiply and get louder next week if Biden stays in the race past the weekend.
And they warn that Biden’s fundraising, which has taken a substantial hit this month, will continue to slacken, putting the president in an increasingly difficult position to stage a comeback in the polls against Trump.
One Democratic strategist close to a lawmaker who has called for Biden to reassure Democratic voters he can win in November said the Biden campaign has failed to present a clear path to victory.
“What everyone has said is we need to see more and, frankly, the last two weeks has been worse than the actual debate in a lot of ways because they haven’t put a plan together and haven’t executed it,” the source said.
The strategist said Biden appeared to be an underdog heading into the race, but his prospects of victory plummeted after the debate and further slipped after the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pa., which has united GOP and had a rallying effect on their voters.
The source said “a big piece of this is the money” and warned that “donors aren’t just freezing the Biden campaign, they’re freezing everybody out,” noting that not only major donors have withheld contributions but the grassroots “online money is slow,” as well.
Democratic senators and House members last week said Biden’s exclusive interview with Stephanopoulos shortly after the debate did little to move the needle and included several cringeworthy moments, such as when Biden couldn’t quite remember if he watched a recording of the debate afterward and dodged a question about whether he would undergo an independent cognitive examination.
Then at the NATO summit, Biden mistakenly referred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin” before catching his mistake, and just hours later mistakenly referred to Vice President Harris as “Vice President Trump.”
Another embarrassing stumble came during an interview with Black Entertainment Television, when Biden appeared to have trouble remembering the name of his secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, referring to him simply as a “Black man.”
The strategist said Biden hasn’t been able to change the minds of his fellow Democratic critics about his fitness for office over the past three weeks.
“There’s no possible way he can win and he has to come to this conclusion on his own, which is sounds like he’s going to,” the source said. “They’re hearing from voters, they’re hearing from donors who have asked the campaign, ‘What’s your path to victory?’ and they don’t have one.”
Democratic senators emerged from a meeting with senior Biden campaign officials last week feeling unsatisfied with their arguments for why Biden should remain the party’s nominee.
The advisers, campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon, and senior advisers Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti, argued Biden was “in the zone” of being competitive in battleground states and pointed to a Washington Post/ABC News poll showing Biden and Trump tied nationally.
But since then, the polling has gotten worse for the president.
An AP/NORC Center for Public Affairs poll released Thursday showed that two-thirds of Democrats think Biden should pull out of the race. And it revealed that 6 in 10 Democrats think Harris would do a good job as the party’s nominee for president.
A CBS News/YouGov poll published Thursday showed Trump now leading Biden by 5 points nationally, while an Emerson College poll showed the former president ahead in seven battleground states.
A second veteran Democratic strategist said Biden has continued to suffer political damage almost every day since the debate, as a growing number of Democratic lawmakers and donors call for him to abandon his reelection bid.
“Every day that goes by like this is bad. I think we’re at the point right now where the post-debate is worse than the debate,” the source said.
The strategist said Biden’s “brain farts” are “just getting worse.”
“The president should be happy that it’s summer and ‘Saturday Night Live’ isn’t on every week,” the adviser added.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) on Friday said Biden is “weighing” the question of which Democratic nominee would have the best chance of beating Trump.
“I think our president is weighing what he should weigh, which is: Who is the best candidate to win in November and to carry forward the Democratic Party’s values and priorities in this campaign?” Coons said at the Aspen Security Forum.
And he pushed back strongly on Democrats who say Biden hasn’t done enough to address concerns about his candidacy, pointing to the president’s leadership of the NATO conference in Washington last week and his rigorous campaign schedule.
“He chaired … meeting after meeting, three days of the NATO summit — strongest NATO has ever been — did a press conference, did campaign events, did campaign rallies, and there are folks still saying he’s not strong enough or capable enough to be our next president. I disagree,” he said.
But Biden’s comeback attempt hasn’t gone as well as many Democrats had hoped.
He got into a tense exchange with Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) during a conference call last weekend after Crow asked whether concerns about Biden’s age, health and mental fitness posed a national security risk.
“I don’t want to hear that crap,” Biden responded, angrily.
Biden vented his frustration with NBC anchor Lester Holt in another exclusive interview that his campaign strategists hoped would be able to reset the narrative.
When Holt noted Biden appeared confused at times during his debate with Trump, Biden criticized the media for not doing more to fact-check Trump’s “28 lies” on the debate stage.
At one point, the exasperated president exclaimed: “What’s up with you guys? Come on, man,” he said.
And while Biden has held several rallies, a press conference in Washington, and sat down for several one-on-one interviews, he hasn’t thrown himself into the maelstrom of unscripted situations over the past 2 1/2 weeks in a way that some Democratic critics on Capitol Hill had envisioned.
Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio), who had held off for days on calling for Biden to step aside, said Friday he had finally reached the conclusion that the president is “no longer the best person to” convince the American people that Trump should not be elected nor Republicans allowed to take control of Congress.
As of Friday afternoon, three Democratic senators and at least 30 House Democrats have called on Biden to drop out of the race.
Ten House Democrats joined that call on Friday alone — Reps. Zoe Lofgren (Calif.), Jared Huffman (Calif.), Marc Veasey (Texas), Mark Pocan (Wis.), Betty McCollum (Minn.), Kathy Castor (Fla.), Jesús “Chuy” García (Ill.), Gabe Vasquez (N.M.), Sean Casten (Ill.) and Landsman.
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) called on Biden to drop out on Thursday evening, and Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) did so Friday. Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the Democratic nominee for Senate in California, have also urged Biden to step aside.
Biden returned to Delaware to isolate himself after testing positive for COVID-19 Wednesday after an event in Las Vegas.