Biden campaign vows to stay in fight with Trump as pressure mounts

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Joe Biden’s team said on Friday the US president would press on with his re-election bid despite mounting calls by Democrats for him to bow out after a disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump.

A campaign staffer said Biden was still committed to a second debate on September 10 with Trump, hours after the 81-year-old president’s stumbling performance on Thursday reignited concerns about his age and fitness for office.

But one veteran Democratic operative said panic had spread through the party as supporters concluded that the US president would struggle to beat Trump.

“The only way it could have been more disastrous was if he had fallen off the stage. Big donors are saying . . . he has to go,” the operative said. “If Biden stays in, we will have to watch him on a trapeze wire until November.”

Top Democratic lawmakers, donors and party insiders were rattled after the president frequently stumbled over his words in the debate, gave rambling answers and in some instances appeared to lose his train of thought.

The debate had been seen as a crucial opportunity for Biden to turn around his faltering re-election campaign, which has been weighed down by concerns about his age and the cost of living.

On Friday, RealClearPolitics put the odds of a Trump victory in the presidential election at 54.8 per cent, compared with 19.2 per cent for Biden.

It also listed the odds of a win for California Democratic governor Gavin Newsom at 10.8 per cent, and put vice-president Kamala Harris at 4.5 per cent.

The operative said the easiest path forward for the party would be if Biden’s wife Jill, or his inner circle, convinced him to drop out.

If that does not work, Democrats are hoping that former President Barack Obama or former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, the former Democratic presidential nominee, would persuade Biden in private.

The operative said some Democrats were already texting people close to the Obamas and Clintons to convince the Democratic heavyweights to urge him to quit.

“There’s lots of gallows humour among Democratic members this morning. The talk about whether Biden continues is fully out in the open,” a Democratic Congressman told the FT. 

Another Democratic party insider said after the debate that there was a “higher level of panic than I’ve seen or thought possible”.

“We need a new nominee,” said a Democratic lawmaker.

Democratic donors also expressed alarm about Biden’s debate performance.

“When I last saw him he wasn’t great but definitely more coherent than in [the] debate,” a big-dollar Wall Street donor said. “I’m not sure there is an alternative at the moment but if there ever was a chance to change things up it’s now.”

Despite the alarm across the party, the Biden team said that Thursday was the US president’s best day of grassroots fundraising since the start of his campaign.

A spokesperson said Biden was now “riding the momentum” of his “decisive win” in Thursday’s debate as he headed to a rally in North Carolina.

The campaign later said Biden had raised $14mn on Thursday and Friday morning, and that the hour after the debate on Thursday night was the single best hour of fundraising since the president launched his re-election bid.

Biden himself brushed aside questions about his candidacy late on Thursday at an impromptu stop at a Waffle House restaurant in Atlanta, saying: “I think we did well.”

Asked about calls for him to drop out of the race and whether he had any concerns about his debate performance, Biden replied: “No. It’s hard to debate a liar.”

After his rally in North Carolina on Friday, the president is set to attend several closed-door meetings with fundraisers, including a campaign event on Friday night in Manhattan and two on Saturday in the Hamptons and New Jersey.

Trump is set to hold his own rally on Friday afternoon in Virginia, a state he lost to Biden by 10 points in 2020 but where the latest opinion polls show the two men in a statistical tie.