politics
WASHINGTON (AP) — While President Joe Biden was out of sight at Camp David on Sunday, spending time together with his family, outstanding Democrats publicly expressed their unwavering support for his campaign after his fickle debate performance and growing concerns about whether he should stay within the race for the White House.
“I don't think Joe Biden has a problem leading for the next four years,” said one in every of his close allies, Democratic Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina. “Joe Biden should continue to build on his track record.”
Biden's allies took to the Sunday talk shows to acknowledge that the president's performance in Thursday night's debate against Republican Donald Trump was between subpar and poor, encouraging voters to look beyond the moment, consider Biden's long-term record and concentrate on Trump's myriad falsehoods in the course of the 90-minute debate.
Privately, nonetheless, Biden's campaign has worked to allay concerns in regards to the CNN debate, through which Biden sounded croaky and at times was unable to complete sentences. The campaign has spent the times since then attempting to keep donors and surrogates on board.
After a fundraiser in New York on Saturday, Biden and his family traveled to Camp David, the presidential residence outside Washington. The previously planned trip was also used to take family photos for the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago in August.
The 81-year-old Democratic president's age was already a priority amongst voters before the talk, and the prime-time debate appeared to amplify deep-seated public concerns in front of perhaps the biggest audience he can have within the 4 months leading as much as Election Day. More than 51 million people tuned in to the talk, in keeping with CNN.
Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat and Baptist minister from Georgia, said there have been “more than a few Sundays when I wish I had given a better sermon,” and related that have to Biden's performance at the talk.
“But after the sermon was over, my job was to embody the message of being there for the people I serve. And that's what Joe Biden has done his whole life,” Warnock said, echoing other supporters' comments that while Biden debated poorly, he did a great job of governing his entire life.
Warnock, like Clyburn and others, addressed Trump's many falsehoods in the course of the debate – falsehoods that Biden and the talk moderators often failed to ascertain from the stage – including in regards to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, immigration and the consequence of the 2020 election.
“Whenever he moved his mouth, he lied,” Warnock said of Trump.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, dodged questions on Trump's false claims and praised Trump's performance while accusing the national news media of covering up a debilitating illness.
Trump “was strong. He was clear. He was coherent,” Graham said.
He called Biden “compromised” and said “the media is covering it up.”
Behind closed doors, some Democrats were concerned that Biden's campaign team and the Democratic National Committee weren’t taking the implications of Biden's appearance seriously enough.
DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison and Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez held a conference call Saturday afternoon with dozens of committee members across the country – a bunch that’s amongst essentially the most influential within the party. They offered a rosy assessment of the best way forward without allowing other participants on the decision a probability to ask questions.
Several committee members who participated in the decision, most of whom were granted anonymity to debate the private conversation, described feeling as in the event that they were being asked to disregard a serious predicament.
“There were a number of things that could have been said to clarify the situation. But that's not what we got. We were manipulated,” said Joe Salazar, a DNC member-elect from Colorado who participated in the decision. Gaslit is a term for manipulation or misleading.
Former Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat who served with Biden within the Senate for twenty-four years, said in an email to supporters that the president's performance in the talk was “a disaster from which Biden cannot recover.”
Harkin suggested that Democratic senators in key elections and “perhaps all incumbent Democratic senators should write a letter to Biden asking him to release his delegates and resign so the convention can choose a new nominee,” in keeping with an email obtained by The Associated Press and first referenced Saturday in Iowa journalist Julie Gammack's “Iowa Potluck” column.
Harkin said a change “would revitalize the party at all levels and attract the attention of the general public who really want an alternative to Trump,” especially “independents, young voters and weak Democrats who could be re-energized.”
“These are dangerous times and more important than Joe Biden’s ego or desire to remain president,” Harkin concluded.
Supporters like Clyburn, whose support was crucial to Biden's victory within the 2020 South Carolina primary, pointed to the president's rally in North Carolina on Friday, where he appeared energetic and energetic – a stark turnaround from the previous evening.
“I know I'm not a young man anymore – that's for sure,” Biden said on the rally. “Folks, I don't walk as casually as I used to. I don't speak as fluently as I used to. I can't debate as well as I used to.”
“But I know what I know: I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. And I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done. And I know, as millions of Americans know, that when you get knocked down, you get back up,” he said to thunderous applause.
Biden's team reported that the campaign has raised over $33 million since Thursday, with $26 million of that coming from smaller donations, including about half from first-time donors this election cycle. The campaign said Thursday was its best day for grassroots fundraising, while Friday, the day after the talk, was its second best.
Trump aides reported that the Republican raised over $8 million on Thursday evening alone.
Michael Tyler, communications director for Biden's campaign, said there had been “no” internal discussions about Biden's resignation, but in addition acknowledged that the president had a “bad night” on stage.
Clyburn and Graham appeared on CNN's “State of the Union” and Warnock appeared on NBC's “Meet the Press.”
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