In the immediate aftermath of the first presidential debate Thursday night, an old question emerged with renewed urgency: Should Biden drop out of the race?
The 90-minute debate, hosted by CNN and moderated by the organizations’ Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, was, as Vanity Fair’s Bess Levin wrote, “a terrible night that left people who care about the fate of the country/world/universe on the floor in a fetal position from which no one has gotten up.”
President Joe Biden’s performance was rife with the very moments Democrats were hoping to avoid; he seemed old and frazzled. His competitor, former president Donald Trump, told lie after lie after lie—on abortion, taxes, immigration, etc. There was no real-time fact-checking provided by CNN. At some points, like when the septuagenarian and octogenarian were bragging about their golf game, it was simply difficult to watch.
Biden mentioned the showdown with Trump and addressed his performance at a campaign event in North Carolina on Friday. “Did you see Trump last night? My guess he set—and I mean this sincerely—a new record for the most lies told in a single debate,” Biden said. He continued, “Folks, I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth.
After the debate, per reporting from The Daily Beast, Biden campaign spokesperson, Seth Schuster, texted multiple media outlets, “Of course he’s not dropping out.”
The mechanics of replacing Biden would be difficult, to say the least, though not impossible. Those calling for Biden to drop out of the race and release all the pledged delegates he has accumulated—3,894 of 3,937 committed so far, according to a tally by AP—were swift and stern.
The New York Times editorial board wrote, “The president appeared on Thursday night as the shadow of a great public servant. He struggled to explain what he would accomplish in a second term. He struggled to respond to Mr. Trump’s provocations. He struggled to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies, his failures and his chilling plans. More than once, he struggled to make it to the end of a sentence.”
“The burden rests on the Democratic Party,” the board continued, “to put the interests of the nation above the ambitions of a single man.”
The Times also published two other opinion pieces during the debate fallout, one by columnist Nicholas Kristof entitled “President Biden, I’ve Seen Enough” and another in which Thomas Friedman writes, “I watched the Biden-Trump debate alone in a Lisbon hotel room, and it made me weep. I cannot remember a more heartbreaking moment in American presidential campaign politics in my lifetime, precisely because of what it revealed: Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election.”
According to Axios, a well-known Democrat who often talks to the president said that those who are surrounding Biden should tell him “the absolute truth about where he is” and that “loyalty doesn’t mean blind loyalty.”
It didn’t take long for those in Biden’s corner to jump in and attempt to reassure an anxious American public.
“Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know.” former president Barack Obama posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, Friday afternoon. “But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself.”