President Joe Biden on Wednesday vowed to continue his campaign and sought to reassure panicking Democrats about his viability as a candidate for the November 5 election after a disastrous debate performance highlighted his frailty and apparent cognitive decline.
Mr Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris joined a phone call with the Democratic National Committee in an effort to calm jitters about the 81-year-old President, while the White House said he had no intention of stepping aside.
“I am running. I am the leader of the Democratic Party. No one is pushing me out,” Mr Biden said, according to a top aide who posted his comments on the X social media platform.
Citing another person on the call, a Politico reporter said Mr Biden had asserted: “I'm in this race to the end, and we’re going to win.”
Mr Biden's press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said he is “absolutely not” planning to step down.
The President also spoke to Democratic leaders in Congress, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and was due to host more than 20 Democratic governors for a closed-door roundtable on Wednesday evening.
So, at least officially, the Biden-Harris campaign is still going full steam ahead.
But all is not well for Team Biden and Wednesday's efforts appeared to be an attempt to paper over the cracks that are developing within the Democratic Party.
Lloyd Doggett, a congressman from Texas, on Tuesday became the first Democratic representative to call on the President to “make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw”.
“Our overriding consideration must be who has the best hope of saving our democracy from an authoritarian takeover by a criminal and his gang. To much is at stake to risk a Trump victory … President Biden saved our democracy by delivering us from Trump in 2020. He must not deliver us to Trump in 2024,” Mr Doggett wrote in a statement.
And former House speaker Nancy Pelosi appeared on MSNBC, saying it was fair to raise questions about Mr Biden's age and health.
“I think it's a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or is this a condition,” the senior Democrat said.
The Democratic Convention, which begins on August 19 in Chicago, is the moment the party will officially nominate its candidate. Unless Mr Biden bows out, he will become locked into a race with Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, who is outperforming Mr Biden in most polls, including in crucial swing states.
Another Democratic representative, Summer Lee, told CBS News that “if our President decides this is not a pathway forward for him, we have to move very quickly”, and said Ms Harris would be the “obvious choice” to replace him.
“She’s sitting right there. She’s already been in the White House. And has the name recognition. And has been on the trail … and the optics of pushing aside a black woman … it’s not good,” Ms Lee said.
During last week's debate in Atlanta, Mr Biden stumbled through incoherent sentences, declaring at one point that he “beat Medicaid”. He was unable to fill his allotted time or effectively rebut many of the dozens of falsehoods Trump unleashed.
At a Virginia campaign fundraising event this week, Mr Biden conceded that it had not been “very smart” of him embark on an intense travel schedule two weeks before the debate, including visits to France and Italy.
“I didn’t listen to my staff … and then I almost fell asleep on stage,” said Mr Biden, who spent nearly a full week away from his usual executive duties preparing for the debate at the secluded Camp David.
“It’s not an excuse but an explanation.”
Other members of Congress have refrained from outright calling for Mr Biden to step aside, but there is momentum gaining around Ms Harris.
Jim Clyburn, a high-ranking Democratic congressman, said he would support Ms Harris if Mr Biden were to step aside, but added that he “still wants a Biden-Harris ticket”.
“This party should not, in any way, do anything to work around Ms Harris. We should do everything we can to bolster her whether she's in second place or at the top of the ticket,” Mr Clyburn told MSNBC.
Some Democrats, meanwhile, are resigned to the likelihood of defeat in November.
Jared Golden, a vulnerable Democratic congressman serving in a district in Maine that Trump won in the 2020 election, wrote in an op-ed on Tuesday that he had assumed the former president would win for months now and that he had made his peace with that outcome.
“Lots of Democrats are panicking about whether President Joe Biden should step down as the party’s nominee,” he wrote. “Biden’s poor performance in the debate was not a surprise.
“It also didn’t rattle me as it has others because the outcome of this election has been clear to me for months: while I don’t plan to vote for him, Donald Trump is going to win.”
A CNN poll found that three quarters of US voters believe Democrats would have a better shot at holding the presidency with someone other than Mr Biden.
And a Suffolk University/USA Today poll found Trump would beat Mr Biden by 3 per cent in a six-candidate presidential ballot – before the debate, those same pollsters indicated that the candidates were tied.
One in three Democratic voters think Mr Biden should step aside.
Ron and Rebecca Pollack stood outside the White House on Wednesday holding a sign that read: “We love you Joe – end your candidacy.”
“I like Joe Biden a lot”, Mr Pollack told The National. “I’ve contributed to his campaign … but I don’t think he’s a strong candidate.”
He listed Ms Harris, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear as candidates who could fare better against Trump.
“I think the likelihood is, if he steps aside, it would be Kamala Harris”, he says.
Ms Pollack described being unnerved by Mr Biden's debate performance.
“To be totally honest, as he walked out on stage, I thought, yikes,” she said.
“This is not the vigour or appearance of what I was hoping for … And then once he started talking … it was like, I’m out of here.”
