Joe Biden’s presidential re-election bid hung in the balance on Saturday as his latest effort to put a disastrous debate behind him failed to silence the voices urging him to quit the White House race.
The murmurs of discontent within his own Democratic Party — in the case of five individual House representatives — have turned into outright calls for him to get out. And several major donors have threatened to cut off funding if Biden insists on staying the course.
Angie Craig, the latest Democrat in the House to defect from the party, said Saturday that “I do not believe we can effectively campaign and win against President Donald Trump.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has scheduled a virtual meeting of senior Democrat representatives on Sunday to discuss the best way forward, and Democrat Senator Mark Warner is reportedly working to organize a similar forum in the upper house.
In what was billed as a defining TV interview on Friday, Biden’s strategy was to flatly deny falling poll numbers and concerns over his mental and physical fitness stemming from his disappointing performance against rival Donald Trump.
He blamed the debate debacle on a bad cold and insisted it was just a “bad night” rather than evidence of increasing frailty and cognitive decline. And the 81-year-old was adamant he would not be pressured to end his campaign.
“If God Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get out of the race,’ I would be out of the race,” he said. “But God Almighty is not coming down.”
However, the calls for less divine intervention appear to be growing stronger.
Internal disagreements
Biden’s campaign team is nevertheless pressing ahead, with two events planned in Pennsylvania on Sunday and visits to other battleground states later in the month.
Prior to Friday’s interview, Biden delivered a forceful, energetic speech at a rally in Wisconsin in which he categorically declared, “I will stay in the race. I will defeat Donald Trump.”
That followed a meeting with the ABC network that appeared unlikely to assuage critics’ concerns that — away from a teleprompter — Biden might have difficulty communicating.
Some of his answers were erratic, evasive and difficult to understand, even as he sought to deflect questions about his mental acuity and rejected the notion that his party would consider replacing him.
The Biden campaign had to put out another small fire on Saturday when it emerged that the White House had provided questions for interviews the president gave to two black radio stations on Friday.
Out of reach?
Democratic strategist David Axelrod suggested in a CNN article that Biden engaged in “denial, confusion, and defiance”.
“The stakes are as high as Biden has implied. And if he believes, as I think he does, he will ultimately do what duty and love of country demand, and step aside,” Axelrod wrote in the article published Saturday.
“If he doesn’t do so, it will be Biden’s age, not Trump’s moral and ethical emptiness, that will dominate the rest of this most important campaign and tarnish the president’s historic legacy.”
Meanwhile, Trump sarcastically suggested that Biden should “ignore his many critics and move forward with urgency and strength.”
“He must be as incisive, precise, and energetic as he was in the debate,” the Republican rival said in a social media post Saturday.
For now, Democrats appear intent on suppressing any dissent toward their leader — at least publicly.
But with election day just four months away, any moves to replace Biden as the nominee must happen as quickly as possible, and meetings of top congressional Democrats in the coming days will be watched for signs of any more open revolt.
In the meantime, the strategy for Biden and his campaign team appears to be to just get through it.
His next big test will be a press conference on Thursday during the NATO leaders’ summit in Washington.
When asked in the ABC interview why he doesn’t undergo independent neurological testing, Biden argued that the role of US president means undergoing constant mental evaluations.
“I undergo cognitive testing every day,” he said. “Not only am I campaigning, I’m running the world.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
