“Joe Biden is a person. Take away his title, he’s a person who has dealt with tragedy,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday. “He’s a person who has dealt with it head-on. He’s a person who knows how to get back up when you’ve been knocked down.”
The effort to portray the debate as a “bad day” and the president as a “comeback kid” reflects an increasingly apparent rift between Biden’s inner circle and many in the Democratic Party. A growing number of Democrats see Biden’s performance, when he sometimes struggled to finish his sentences, as a reflection of a serious problem for the party, not an episode in his history of overcoming adversity.
And they emphasize the high stakes.
“Instead of reassuring voters, the President failed to effectively defend his many accomplishments and expose Trump’s many lies,” Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), who on Tuesday became the first Democratic lawmaker to call on Biden to resign, said in a statement. “President Biden saved our democracy by freeing us from [former president Donald] Trump in 2020. He must not abandon us to Trump in 2024.”
Overcoming adversity has long been core to Biden’s identity. His Senate career began with the deaths of his wife and daughter in a car crash in 1972, and his son Beau died in 2015. Biden lost his first two attempts at the presidency, was ousted in 2016, and began the 2020 primaries with brutal losses in Iowa and New Hampshire.
The effort to tie Biden's current challenge to his history of overcoming adversity comes as the president's advisers try to fend off criticism from influential voices who have described his candidacy as irredeemable.
Influential publications, liberal commentators and former elected officials are calling for him to withdraw from the presidential race after failing to allay concerns about his age and mental acuity. No prominent Democratic officeholders have called on him to withdraw, but concerned lawmakers are holding closed-door discussions about whether Biden’s continued candidacy is fueling Democrats’ worst nightmare: Trump’s return to the White House.
Even some of Biden’s longtime allies warn that the current crisis is unlike any tragedy he has overcome in the past. Former Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who served alongside Biden for more than 20 years, said that while Biden’s life of public service has been admirable, he must make the “selfless” decision to step aside.
“Saving American democracy is more important than loyalty to one person,” Harkin said in a text message. “I hope his wife and family convince him to do the selfless, courageous thing and announce his retirement from government, effective January of next year, and release his representatives.”
Rather than encouraging him to retire, Biden’s family members have been the most ardent supporters of his second term, using a recent two-day retreat at Camp David to boost his spirits and demonstrate their own resolve.
These family members, along with Biden’s close inner circle of advisers, have watched him overcome trials over the years and have come to reflect his self-confidence, according to people familiar with their thinking. At Biden’s family gathering at Camp David, the president was encouraged to stay the course by a group of people he typically turns to when facing political or personal challenges, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
“They've been through so much worse that they can have that perspective,” said one person familiar with the situation. “We have bad days, but let's move forward.”
Some allies and concerned lawmakers were cheered by Biden’s powerful performance in Raleigh, North Carolina, the day after the debate. His well-received speech to a raucous crowd became the centerpiece of a new campaign ad.
Former Sen. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.), one of Biden's lifelong friends, said the president has developed an “inner self-confidence” that comes from repeatedly defying his opponents over the years.
“By working through the hard things, he's created an environment where he feels confident that he can get up in the morning and deal with what's on his plate, not what happened last night, yesterday or the day before,” Kaufman said in an interview.
But some critics of the keep-calm-and-carry-on approach worry that the inner confidence of Biden and his aides is misaligned with the precarious position he and his party find themselves in after the debate. They have been waiting to see whether Biden, 81, would more directly address concerns about his age or change his campaign approach, but so far they have been disappointed.
According to two Democratic Party congressional staffers who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, some donors and vulnerable Democratic lawmakers have told their aides they feel the campaign is hoodwinking them by claiming that Biden’s poor performance in debates was a one-off incident and not part of mounting evidence that his performance is declining.
While Biden acknowledged signs of aging during the North Carolina rally — noting that his speaking, walking and debating skills have deteriorated over the years — that argument is far from a winning message for Democrats, aides said.
Campaign officials say presenting Biden as “America’s comeback kid,” as New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) described him on Saturday — could win over skeptical voters.
The campaign ad featuring Biden's North Carolina speech debuted Monday on MSNBC's “Morning Joe,” one of several cable shows debating whether the president should withdraw from the race.
Viewers who tuned in early to the show were able to hear host Mika Brzezinski, who along with his husband Joe Scarborough has a personal relationship with Biden, make a powerful argument for why he should continue his campaign.
““This moment in the race fits the whole story of Joe Biden’s life,” she said. “In his personal and professional life, Biden has repeatedly risen from the bottom.”
Over the next 10 minutes, she recounted the president's personal history of trials and triumphs, including an aneurysm in 1988 that nearly cost him his life, Beau's death, his son Hunter's felony conviction and a presidency that survived setbacks and turmoil and produced a long legislative record.
Some of the most significant moments in Biden's life have involved presidential campaigns, where he had to make agonizing decisions about whether to run or step down.
In 2020, he suffered embarrassing defeats in the states that had previously nominated him, finishing fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire. While several strategists suggested that the former vice president should end his presidential bid gracefully, Biden traveled to South Carolina, where a victory would give his campaign a boost.
“For all of you who have been beaten down, counted out, left behind, this is your campaign,” Biden said in his victory speech. “Just a few days ago, the press and the pundits declared this candidacy dead. Now, thanks to all of you, the heart of the Democratic Party, we just won. … And we are very much alive.”
He went on to win the Democratic nomination, defeating Trump in November. These triumphs bolstered his confidence, but further undermined his trust in polls and pundits.
Biden also faced a difficult decision about whether to run for president in 2016, after Hillary Clinton had already entered the race and received crucial support from the party's elite. In his 2017 book, “Promise Me, Dad,” Biden recounted how many top Democrats, including President Barack Obama, dissuaded him from running by suggesting he couldn't win. He ultimately decided not to enter the race, citing his grief over Beau's death as a factor.
Clinton was defeated by Trump in the 2016 general election, a development that deepened Biden's skepticism of those who dissuaded him from running. Biden has since suggested that he could have prevented Trump from entering the White House in the first place. “I regret it every day,” he later said of the 2016 decision not to run.
Biden and his allies have since indicated that he remains uniquely positioned to defeat Trump in November, even after his debate failure.
“I think he's the only Democrat who can beat Donald Trump,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) said Sunday on ABC's “This Week.”
Still, Biden’s deep confidence in his own political abilities may have been one reason he struggled in the debate, some historians say, pointing to a long history of incumbent politicians faltered in their first few debates.
“No one comes to the White House without the genes of Olympic competition, so I'm sure he believed he would prove the skeptics wrong,” said Russell Riley, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia's Miller Center.
Biden, he said, probably expected to beat Trump easily in the debate. He added: “By all accounts, he did not.”
Tyler Pager, Dan Balz and Leigh Ann Caldwell contributed to this report.
