Joe Biden went on the offensive on Friday as he tried to make up for a poor debate performance against Donald Trump and insist he is the right person to win the US presidential election in November.
Biden’s appearance at a campaign rally in the battleground state of North Carolina came amid concern within his Democratic Party about replacing the 81-year-old Biden as their nominee — and shortly before the country’s most influential newspaper urged him to step down.
“I don’t walk as easily 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 said in unusually confessional remarks to supporters.
“But I know how to tell the truth. I know how to do this job,” he said to massive applause, and vowed that “when you fall, you get up again.”
Biden’s team was in damage-control mode after Thursday’s debate, when he often hesitated, stumbled over words and lost his train of thought — raising fears about his ability to serve another term.
They hoped it would allay public doubts about his advancing age and expose Trump as a habitual liar.
But the president failed to match his loudmouth opponent, who offered a series of false or misleading statements about everything from the economy to immigration.
On Friday, Biden said things Democrats wished they had heard in the televised debate.
“Did you see Trump last night? My guess is he — and I mean this with all sincerity — set a new record for the most lies in a single debate,” Biden said.
“Donald Trump is a real threat to this country. He’s a threat to our freedom. He’s a threat to our democracy. He’s a threat to literally everything about America.”
Trump also returned to the campaign trail on Friday, addressing a rally in Virginia and launching his familiar attacks on Biden in his speech.
“It’s not about his age, it’s about his qualifications,” Trump said.
“The question every voter should be asking themselves today is not whether Joe Biden can survive a 90-minute debate, but whether America can survive four more years of Crooked Joe Biden.”
A New Democrat?
Speaking on the chances of Biden being replaced by another candidate, Trump said, “I don’t really believe that, because he does better in the polls than any (other) Democrat.”
So far, no senior Democratic leader has publicly called on Biden to withdraw the nomination, and most are toeing the party line of staying on the current ticket.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose name figures prominently on the list of potential replacement candidates, said shortly after the debate, “I will never turn my back on President Biden.”
Pressing for a change in the ticket would be politically risky, and Biden would likely have to decide on his own whether to withdraw to make way for another nominee before the party convention next month.
Biden won a landslide victory in the primary, and the party’s 3,900 delegates attending the convention in Chicago are grateful to him.
If he steps down, delegates will have to find a replacement.
“There are bad debate nights,” Biden’s former boss Barack Obama wrote on X.
But this election “is still a choice between a man who has fought his whole life for the common people and a man who thinks only of himself.”
A logical — but not automatic — candidate to replace Biden would be his Vice President, Kamala Harris, who also staunchly defended his performance in the debate.
However, the display of Democratic loyalty and Biden’s defiance in North Carolina was not enough for the New York Times.
The daily newspaper called Biden’s campaign a “reckless gamble” in the face of the threat posed by Trump, and its editorial board — which is separate from the newsroom — called on the president to step aside.
It added: “The greatest public service Mr. Biden can perform now is to announce that he will not seek re-election.”
Many election bookmakers also abandoned Biden and preferred 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.
The second debate is scheduled for September 10.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)