Biden's debate debacle last Thursday exposed the bet, forcing the 81-year-old president to admit at a rally in North Carolina the next day that he has an impaired ability to walk and talk. Concerns that have since flared up within the party have centered on fears that the decline evident during the debate and other recent public events will only continue, disqualifying him as a candidate.
“I'm going through the same thing and I just know it's not going to get better,” said Democratic strategist James Carville, 79, one of the most outspoken Democrats concerned about Biden's path forward. He said top donors expressed “deep concern” at a breakfast he attended Friday at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
“It’s like seeing your grandmother naked,” he said of the debate. “You can’t get it out of your head.”
However, Biden's team has argued that concerns about Biden's most basic skills and competencies will not be reflected at the ballot box, both because of Biden's record and voters' commensurate aversion to the idea of former President Donald Trump winning a second term.
The Biden campaign's polling since the debate has, they say, confirmed their theory on the matter. Although some Biden voters in 2020 left the debate with a more negative view of the president, a large majority of those who were rejected said they still voted for Biden. A significant portion of the group also reconsidered their views when shown clips of Biden's Friday rally in North Carolina, where he showed much more energy and declared, “I know how to do this job.”
“Our job is to show voters that Joe Biden is not only up to the task, but that he is currently doing the job they sent him to do and that he has a vision for a second term,” said Biden pollster Molly Murphy.
The renewed effort was launched on Monday a new advertisementdebuted on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, using footage of Biden’s energetic Friday speech in North Carolina to attack Trump, mixed with footage of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, blacked-out footage of Trump, and footage of Biden doing the job of president. The ad includes Biden’s admission: “I know I’m not a young man.”
“And I know, like millions of Americans,” Biden bellows at the end of the ad, as the crowd cheers, “that when you get knocked down, you get back up.”
From the start of the campaign, Biden's team has painted a relatively bleak picture of how the election would go. Their strategy revolved around forcing Americans to choose between two men they have serious concerns about: Trump, whose political approach has been a consistent loser in elections since 2016, and Biden, who enters the race with historically low approval ratings and unprecedented concerns about his capabilities.
a June Gallup Poll before the debate, it emerged that 67 percent of the country believed Biden was “too old to be president” — a percentage twice as high as the concerns faced by the late Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who was 72 on Election Day in 2008, and Bob Dole (R-Kan.), who was 73 when he was the Republican nominee in 1996. CBS News/YouGov poll after Thursday's debate, it emerged that 72 percent said Biden “does not have the mental and cognitive health to be president.”
Those numbers aren't disputed by the Biden campaign, though advisers point out that a significant share of voters also have concerns about Trump. Gallup found that 37 percent of voters think Trump is “too old,” while CBS found that 49 percent thought Trump didn't have the mental health to be president.
The numbers expose a central challenge for Biden’s campaign: If he gets votes only from those who see him as competent, he would have support from less than a third of the electorate — far below the margin of victory he needs, even with a major third-party candidate lowering the share of the vote he needs to win.
That reality has fueled a party-wide panic behind the scenes in recent days, as donors, strategists and some elected officials grapple with the idea that a candidate can win the world’s most powerful office despite the perception that he is unqualified to fulfill his obligations. Major donors have expressed alarm, saying they recognize in Biden’s performance some of the deterioration they’ve seen at smaller rallies and donor events.
Democratic leaders, for their part, have mostly withheld public judgment or voiced support for Biden’s candidacy as they wait for a resolution to the election. Even Trump advisers have discussed the likelihood that it will take until after the Fourth of July holiday to know how much damage has been done to Biden.
Another point of contention is the assumption that recent Democratic performances by Senate and gubernatorial candidates in states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona could be replicated by a president whose approval rating is below 40 percent and who is widely seen as unfit for the job, say people who be involved in the discussions. Biden's advisers have long pointed to those results to argue that presidential approval is less decisive in contests where Trump's politics are in question, but they have not tested that with Biden on the ballot.
The rosier scenario is that much of the concern about Biden’s age was already baked into the electorate before Thursday’s debate. While Biden’s record could make it harder to win over new concerned voters, it’s unlikely to significantly reduce his share of the vote. Geoff Garin, another Biden campaign pollster, said in a campaign memo Saturday that there was no change in vote choice in two polls conducted after the debate.
“The critical fringe voters — the swing voters and the marginal turnout targets on both sides — already thought Joe Biden was the person who showed up at that debate,” said Dmitri Mehlhorn, a consultant to major donors and a Democratic strategist who has worked with independent groups worked together to support Biden. “So it's damaging to be clear — that debate has made our work materially more difficult, there's no denying that — but I don't think it's changed our work.”
Biden’s campaign and outside allies still plan to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming months to highlight parts of Trump’s record and agenda that turn off those voters. Trump’s campaign, meanwhile, has publicly signaled that it plans to use the debate footage to underscore its own campaign’s central argument.
“The 'Debate' was a visual representation of the Biden presidency: weak, failed and dishonest,” said Chris LaCivita, an adviser to Trump's campaign. posted on social media on Sunday.
What is not disputed is that Biden was behind where he needed to be when the debate started, and the aftermath has not improved his situation. Instead of the referendum on Trump that Biden hopes to create, the Democratic Party is now consumed with debate over Biden's merits and limitations. It is unclear how that will change in the coming months.
“This election is all about October 15th to Election Day. What concerns dominate the conversation?” said another Democratic strategist involved in the race, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “People will walk into October 15 worried about both candidates and worried about their choice. The question is: which care comes first? And what care is secondary to closing?”
