Two weeks after a shockingly debilitated performance during a debate against Donald Trump, the President has sought to prove that it was, in his words, a “bad episode” and not a “serious condition.” But the debate marked an indelible change in perspective among influential Democrats, donors, and the press, some of whom have called for him to step aside in order to avoid handing the election to the very man he warns could destroy democracy.
With his reelection campaign hanging in the balance, President Biden addressed a crucial news conference on Thursday night at NATO’s Washington summit.
This was precisely two weeks after the catastrophic debate performance in Atlanta, which threw Democrats into a panic and led several lawmakers to call for the president to resign. Biden hasn’t yet managed to get through this crisis. A growing number of Democrats are calling on Joe Biden to end his presidential re-election bid and step aside for a younger contender. The 81-year-old has defiantly declared he is “not going anywhere” .
Advisers hoped Biden would reassure his party with a performance showing him in command on the world stage. Another collapse would surely have spelt the end of his campaign.
In the end, the news conference didn’t hit either of those extremes.
The First Presidential Debate takeaways
Fair or unfair, the reality is that debates frequently revolve around the candidates’ optics—how they show themselves, stand by their records, and deflect criticism. Therefore, Transcripts don’t win elections. Thus, for that reason, following the first general election presidential debate of 2024, a great number of Democrats are raising the alarm.
The president sounded so fragile and trembling in June 27 debate that the Biden campaign claimed he had a cold. However, Biden’s early mistakes contributed to his greatest weakness, which is his age and whether the 81-year-old is capable of enduring four more years in government.
For that reason, Democrats are wondering if it is better to have someone else run for the elections especially that Biden is not the official candidate till now although it is really hard to imagine the party putting Biden aside. Nevertheless, party officials, strategists, and a good number of voters had to have been thinking during this debate what it would be like if any of a few other Democrats were standing on that stage, given that he gave the kind of performance that Democrats feared.[1]
As the debate continued, Biden gained some ground, particularly in the area of foreign policy. He was known for his one-liners, such as dubbing Trump a “whiner” after the latter refused to declare categorically that he would accept the outcome of the 2024 election. However, Biden frequently lacked the energy and consistency to express his ideas. With that toothy giggle he just wasn’t able to strike the same type of victorious blows that people had saw Biden deliver in previous years. Even while Trump continued to spread lies, Biden was unable to capitalize on it in any way. Rather, he appeared sincere in his amazement and confusion, which is never a good thing.[2]
Who wants Biden to go and Why?
Regarding President Biden and his future in the party, Democrats are sharply split. Following a series of underwhelming public appearances and private discussions that sparked additional concerns about Biden’s age and leadership abilities, many Democrats are grappling both publicly and privately with significant doubts about his suitability for government. It appears that Biden needs to win over the American people and confront the issues at hand in this race with more determination.[3]
A growing number of Democrats are calling on Joe Biden to end his presidential re-election bid and step aside for a younger contender. The 81-year-old has defiantly declared he is “not going anywhere” and at the Nato summit on Thursday, offered a lengthy and mostly steady rebuttal to his detractors. But the pressure is mounting as he continues to lose ground in the polls against Republican rival Donald Trump.
Notably, A Texas congressman Lloyd Doggett, a 15-term member, had declared that Mr. Biden needed to “make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw” after June 27 debate. As a member of the influential House Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Doggett, 77, expressed his support for “all that President Biden has achieved,” but he also claimed the Democrat had not been able to “effectively defend his many accomplishments” during the discussion. Recently, other colleagues from the House of Representatives have since joined him.[4]
On Thursday in the NATO summit, leaders united against Russian aggression under Biden’s capable leadership. However, Biden ruined the occasion by referring to Zelensky as “President Putin” before correcting himself, setting the stage for conflicting images in the coming weeks. The stumble would be worthless in isolation, but as long as he keeps running, his remarks will never be evaluated separately.
Soon after, at an unusual press conference meant to show off his ability to manage spontaneous situations, he mispronounced Harris’s name as “Vice-President Trump” in response to the first question. However, he bounced back and spoke with reporters for almost an hour, demonstrating his grasp of global policy.
Prior calls for Biden to step down had been written off as the product of “élites in the Party” or “I don’t care what the millionaires think,” but it was looking more and more likely that he would come under increased functional pressure. Rich contributors were backing away, people realizing that he could not organize or publicize without them. Writing for the Times, George Clooney delivered a high-profile blow when he declared, “We are not going to win in November with this president,” describing Biden as “the same man we all witnessed at the debate,” during a recent fund-raiser in Los Angeles that he co-hosted. Furthermore, we are going to lose both the Senate and the House.[5]
Safe Blue states turning into Purple
In addition, Democrats are becoming more concerned that President Biden’s decision to stay in the presidential race could change the political landscape and turn light-blue states into extremely contested battlegrounds.
Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Virginia—all of which Mr. Biden easily won in 2020—could be in play in November, according to Democrats, local elected officials, and party strategists, given his appalling debate performance last month. Moreover, the Cook Political Report, a prominent elections forecaster, downgraded
New Hampshire and Minnesota from “likely” wins for Mr. Biden to only leaning in his direction. And in a meeting at the White House last week, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico told Mr. Biden that she feared he would lose her state, according to two people briefed on her comments.
Concerns about Mr. Biden soon having to play defence have started to arise among some party leaders, even in a Democratic stronghold like New York, where no Republican presidential candidate has prevailed since Ronald Reagan. The Trump team hasn’t really done anything to challenge Mr. Biden’s 23-point victory in the state in 2020. However, before to the debate, a credible survey had Mr. Biden leading by just a single digit.
Furthermore, a statewide poll conducted this week in Oregon revealed that Mr. Biden was only a single digit ahead of Mr. Trump, according to results provided with The New York Times by an individual not authorized to make the results public. Mr. Biden won in 2020 by sixteen percentage points.[6]
The NATO Summit
The NATO summit has been an event his campaign had hoped would showcase his leadership on the world stage. Rather, it has been overshadowed by scepticism about whether he is prepared for a rough campaign and an additional four years in government, which has been voiced by voters, contributors, and elected Democrats.
While effectively leading a summit of NATO leaders united against Russian aggression, Biden ruined the occasion by referring to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine as “President Putin” before apologising. The stumble would mean little by itself, but as long as he is running, no one will ever again evaluate his statements separately.[7]
Later, during a news conference—Mr. Biden’s first unplanned public appearance since the debate—he addressed Kamala Harris as his “Vice-President Trump.”
Since his appalling performance in a debate two weeks ago against Donald Trump, the Republican opponent in the approaching elections, the US president has been under pressure to resign.
However, other NATO leaders have stood up for him and his leadership abilities throughout the summit. First to defend him, Mr. Macron said, “We all have moments when we forget our words. I’ve experienced it before, and it’s likely to happen to me again tomorrow. Olaf Scholz, the chancellor of Germany, also acknowledged the errors. “You will find enough of them if you constantly watch everyone,” he replied. “Slips of the tongue happen.”[8]
Although, President Joe Biden participated in the most high-stakes news conference of his political career on the sidelines of the NATO summit aiming to persuade his critics and supporters that he is capable of serving a further four years in office.
Obviously, it is unlikely that Biden’s performance will draw over many new supporters. Democrats who want Biden to resign can capitalize on a significant verbal mistake he made at the start of the news conference, while Biden’s supporters will point to the time he spent skillfully responding to a range of foreign policy questions.
Reportedly dismissing worries about his candidature, Biden told reporters on multiple occasions that he was the best qualified candidate for president. He occasionally sounded genuinely outraged and hurt by the criticism of his suitability for the position and the status of his campaign.
There has never been any debate about the length of Biden’s resume. Compared to everyone who has ever held or run for the office, the president has the most political experience. However, his ability to lead for another term is what worries those urging him to go, not his credentials.[9]
Biden reelection in jeopardy
However, Biden’s campaign was uniting a broad coalition to push in the opposite direction, even as worried allies spoke out. Leading progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez expressed their support for him, as did the Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucuses. (Biden is scheduled to visit Texas and Nevada during the Republican Convention in Milwaukee next week. Recently, He went to Detroit, Michigan, to see one of the loudest audiences for the US president in recent memory cheered, “Don’t you quit!” as Joe Biden ascended the stage for the rally. With massive cheers from hundreds of supporters, the presumed Democratic nominee declared, “I am running! And I will win!”
Many people place greater value on his political background, his moral convictions, and his triumph against Donald Trump in 2020 than they do on the consequences of his rambling performance in a debate or public appearance or health concerns during a fresh four-year tenure.
According to experts, these leaders favour Mr. Biden for a variety of reasons, such as his track record in government, his triumph over Trump in 2020, and the risk of nominating a new candidate so soon to the November election.
Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg stated, “I think people are being very respectful of the president’s stated desire to run again.” “And it’s also true that in our system, replacing a candidate for president this late is hard and is unprecedented, and so there’s enormous reticence about making a big change. Nevertheless, it was a “healthy debate” regarding the nominee, he continued.[10]
On the other side, Some Democrats, such as Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont, have continued to call for the president to withdraw from the campaign despite Biden’s insistence for days that he will continue to run, citing Harris as the superior choice for the party.
Throughout the press conference, Biden praised Harris multiple times for her efforts on gun violence prevention and reproductive rights stressing on her ability to be president otherwise he would not have chosen her. But again, Biden insisted that “A lot can happen,” “I believe I am the best qualified to govern. And I think I’m the best qualified to win.”[11]
In the end, Biden had bought himself some time, but his every public appearance would be dogged by the possibility of a confidence collapse. Would it plague his historical position as well? During the NATO press conference, he declared, “I’m not in this for my legacy.” “My goal is to finish the task that I began.”[12]
How the party will move between now and then is anybody’s guess. There are rumors that more Democrats could come out against Biden now that the NATO summit is over. There was nothing in the news conference that looked likely to either definitively rescue Biden or, conversely, seal his fate. CNN revealed that Pelosi and former President Obama had been conferring regarding Biden’s future, as they perceived his chances of winning reelection, about concurrent with the press conference’s conclusion. [13]
