President Joe Biden and his team spent all weekend on a mission to convince Democratic Party members and voters he is still fit for office and is the right choice for their presidential ticket in November.
Biden was forced to play damage control all weekend after a car crash debate performance against former President Donald Trump.
Democrats were in a panic after Biden stumbled and mumbled his way through the debate on Thursday and immediately said his raspy and hard-to-hear voice was the result of a cold and tried to sell the line that it was just a ‘slow start.’
But the reality is Americans saw an 81-year-old President that seemed his age. At several times he lost his train of thought and appeared on stage with his mouth agape and a blank or wide-eyed stare whenever Trump was speaking.
The day after the debate, the President was more energetic at a campaign event in Raleigh, North Carolina with First Lady Jill Biden.
Democrats scrambled over the weekend to conduct damage control after President Joe Biden’s train wreck debate performance against Donald Trump on Thursday led to calls for him to drop out of the race
But it was too late, and many Democratic donors and strategists were already calling for him to step aside and allow a new candidate to emerge before the nomination convention in August.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison and Biden’s campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez held a call Saturday afternoon where they sought to reassure rank and file members of the party of Biden’s viability as a candidate.
According to some on the call, the party leaders largely ignored Biden’s weak showing in Atlanta on Thursday and downplayed the avalanche of criticism that followed. No one was able to ask questions and the chat function was disabled.
The members felt gaslighted by Harrison and Rodriguez and claimed they were being asked to ignore the ire situation of the party’s predicament – either toe the line and get behind Biden’s candidacy or scramble to find a replacement in just one month’s time.
Harrison offered what they described as a rosy assessment of Biden’s path forward.
‘I was hoping for more of a substantive conversation instead of, ‘Hey, let’s go out there and just be cheerleaders,’ without actually addressing a very serious issue that unfolded on American television for millions of people to see,’ Joe Salazar, an elected DNC member from Colorado who was on the call, said, according to the Associated Press .
He added: ‘There were a number of things that could have been said in addressing the situation. But we didn’t get that. We were being gaslit.’
Also on Saturday, Biden stopped at a $250,000 per-head Hampton’s fundraiser at hedge fund manager Barry Rosenstein’s 18-acre beach estate.
Some donors skipped the event, and The New York Times reports that several megadonors were trying to reach Jill Biden to have her convince her husband to bow out for a younger candidate.
‘Lots of people are blaming his wife… for not telling him [to step aside],’ one told the New York Post.
According to Anthony Scaramucci, who attended the fundraiser, Biden used a teleprompter when speaking to donors in the living room of the beach house.
Following Saturday’s campaign stop and fundraiser, the first couple went straight back to presidential retreat Camp David, which is where Biden spent seven days debate prepping before his showdown with Trump at CNN headquarters.
He was set to discuss with his wife and family the future of his political campaign.
President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden held a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina the day after the debate where the President appeared more energetic and defended his viability as a candidate while acknowledging his debate performance could have been better
Joe and Jill brought granddaughters Natalie and Finnegan Biden to attend a Hampton’s fundraiser on Saturday where the President used a teleprompter when speaking to donors at the beach house of hedge fund manager Barry Rosenstein
While concerns over Biden’s mental fitness and calls for him to step aside have remained private over the last several months, now Democrats are saying the quiet part out loud.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) went further than most when saying: ‘There are very honest and serious and rigorous conversations taking place at every level of our party.’
‘We’re having a serious conversation about what to do,’ he said in an interview on MSNBC program Velshi. ‘One thing I can tell you is that regardless of what President Biden decides, our party is going to be unified.’
‘Whether he’s the candidate or someone else is the candidate, he is going to be the keynote speaker at our convention,’ he added. ‘He will be the figure that we rally around to move forward and beat the forces of authoritarianism and reaction in the country.’