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      Could Kamala Harris be a winner for the Democrats if Biden steps aside?

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      Joe Biden’s stumbling debate performance left Democrats so panicked some are searching for an alternative to replace the 81-year-old president as the party’s standard-bearer.Biden has given no indication that he intends to exit the race, and his campaign has flatly dismissed the suggestion. But that has done little to silence critics who are openly questioning whether Biden is the right person to take on Donald Trump, a figure the president – and his party – view as a grave threat to American democracy.In the unlikely scenario Biden decides not to run, the most obvious choice to replace him would be his 59-year-old vice president and running mate, Kamala Harris. But it would not be automatic – and other candidates would likely challenge Harris, who has suffered her own low approval ratings, for the nomination.Already some Democrats are looking past the vice-president at other possible contenders – Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois governor JB Pritzker, California governor Gavin Newsom and Maryland governor Wes Moore.It’s a sign that Democrats have yet to fully embrace Harris as Biden’s heir apparent.“To even discuss Biden stepping down while COMPLETELY IGNORING THE VP … is a serious look into how we see the importance, capacity and seriousness of women of color,” writer Tanzina Vega, said on X.Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, is the highest-ranking female elected official in US history and the first Black and first Asian American to serve as vice president.Democrats, traumatized by Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump in 2016, rallied behind Biden in 2020 over a younger, more diverse and progressive field of candidates that included Harris. As a candidate, Biden promised to be a “bridge” to the next generation of Democratic leaders, which many interpreted as commitment to serve one-term and before passing the baton to Harris.But when the time came to make a decision, Biden argued that he was still the Democrat best-positioned to beat Trump.For the past three and a half years, Harris’s barrier-breaking vice-presidency has divided Democrats. Negative press, some of it self-inflicted, compounded by sexist and racist attacks, and a challenging policy portfolio weighed on public perception of the former California senator. Nearly 50% of voters have an unfavorable view of Harris, according to 538’s polling average, compared with the roughly 40% who view her favorably, figures that are comparable with Biden’s.Despite a rocky start to her tenure, Harris has eased into the role, especially since becoming the administration’s leading voice on abortion rights. On Monday, Harris marked two years since the second anniversary of the US supreme court decision that overturned Roe v Wade with a fiery warning that Trump would not hesitate to further restrict women’s reproductive rights in a second-term.Nodding to her background as a prosecutor, the vice president declared: “In the case of the stealing of reproductive freedom from the women of America, Donald Trump is guilty.”Harris’s clear defense of abortion rights, by far Democrats’ strongest issue, stands in stark contrast to Biden. During Thursday’s debate, Biden fumbled an attack on Trump over Republican bans on the procedure, pivoting bizarrely to immigration and raising the case of a young woman murdered in Georgia.Moments after Biden finished the debate, it was Harris who came to his defense first in a pair of interviews. On CNN and MSNBC, Harris spun his performance, saying voters must look at the last three-and-a-half years of accomplishments and not just at the 90-minute debate. Harris conceded that Biden had a “slow start” but insisted he finished “strong.”“I’m talking about the choice for November,” she said on CNN. “I’m talking about one of the most important elections in our collective lifetime.”In a sharp back-and-forth, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper pressed Harris about calls for Biden to step aside.“I’m not going to spend all night with you talking about the last 90 minutes when I’ve been watching the last three-and-a-half years of performance,” she said, emphasizing his legislative and executive achievements he’s pulled in his first-term.At a rally in Las Vegas the following day, Harris doubled down on her support.“In the Oval Office, negotiating bipartisan deals, I see him in the situation room keeping our country safe,” she said, adding that the election would not be decided by “one night in June”.The Atlanta debate was the first of the election cycle, with a second scheduled in September. The Biden campaign has agreed to a vice-presidential debate between Harris and Trump’s eventual running mate, but the terms have not yet been to confirmed.In a hypothetical matchup against Trump, Harris performed roughly on par with Biden, trailing the former president by six points in a February Times/Siena poll. Biden trailed Trump by five points in the same poll. Meanwhile, the poll found Harris ran stronger than Biden with Black voters, though worse with Hispanic voters and men.Biden’s age has long been an electoral challenge. But his shaky debate performance shocked even his staunchest supporters. At a rally on Friday, Biden acknowledged his stumbles, but insisted he was still the best candidate to defeat Trump.“I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious,” he said at a post-debate rally in North Carolina. “I know 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.”But mounting concerns about Biden’s mental acuity have drawn even greater scrutiny of Harris, particularly from the right. Republicans have sought to make Harris a boogyman, with Nikki Haley warning during the GOP primary a vote for Biden was a vote for “a President Harris”.With the convention scheduled for mid-August in Chicago, and the formal nomination process to take place virtually at some point before that to meet an Ohio ballot deadline, many Democrats have said there is not enough time to replace Biden at the top of the ticket.Former South Carolina lawmaker and Democratic commentator Bakari Sellers, who endorsed Harris in the 2020 primary, said wishing for an alternative to emerge at this stage was futile.“You’re not nominating Gretch or Gavin or Wes over Kamala. Stop it,” he wrote on X, adding: “Choice is Trump, Biden or couch. I choose Joe.” More

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      The stakes of the US election are higher than ever | Sidney Blumenthal

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      I saw western civilization pass before my eyes as Joe Biden drowned.“Putin is waiting for Trump,” John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, has said. When the presidential debate turned to foreign policy, the former president made an apparently startling revelation. He implied that he had a previously unknown conversation with Vladimir Putin before his invasion of Ukraine, perhaps in late 2021 or early 2022. According to Trump, Russia’s president discussed the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. “When Putin saw that, he said, you know what, I think we’re going to go in and maybe take my – this was his dream. I talked to him about it, his dream,” he said. That dream, of course, is the conquest of Ukraine as the restoration of the major piece of the collapsed Soviet Union after the cold war.Biden, overprepared to hit his voluminous talking points, was not listening closely. He did not pick up on Trump’s astounding claim: “I talked to him about it, his dream.” The president’s response was accurate and so concise his words jumbled: “And listen to what he said when he went in, he was going to take Kyiv in five days, remember? Because it’s part of the old Soviet Union. That’s what he wanted, to re-establish Kyiv. And he in fact didn’t do it at all. He didn’t – wasn’t able to get it done. And they’ve lost over – they’ve lost thousands and thousands of troops, 500,000 troops.” Abruptly, Biden ended.He had the time, but did not explain the meaning. He bollixed what he wanted to say about Putin’s effort to occupy Ukraine into “re-establish Kyiv”. Biden did not draw any conclusion. He had not listened closely to Trump’s winding patter. He didn’t sift through the word salad to find the nugget of gold. He did not expose Trump’s worship of Putin, whom he “idolizes”, according to Fiona Hill, the Russia expert formerly on Trump’s national security council, who also wrote that Trump believes Ukraine “must be part of Russia”. Trump shares Putin’s “dream”, to make Russia great again. He aspires to be an unfettered strongman like Putin, dictator “for day one”. That is why, as Bolton says: “Putin is waiting for Trump.” Trump’s campaign is the essential linchpin of Putin’s strategy. Without Trump, he faces endless winter. Trump is his indispensable useful idiot.Biden’s whiff on this or that exchange was more than isolated missed opportunities. His painful performance showed him trying to spew out his numbers, often missing the main point. He often countered without making any argument. It seemed like a PowerPoint presentation missing the closing slides. At times, he lost the plot. “We beat Medicare,” he said confusedly. His acuity and agility were evanescent.Yet sometimes Biden hit his mark. He tore into Trump’s low character, “the morals of an alley cat”, though unfair to cats who don’t choose to be in the alley. He called out Trump’s lies, though accounting for them would have consumed every second in every response.But Biden’s physical appearance was more than a problem of optics. His stiffness was accompanied by a frequently vacant look. He was not the Biden of less than four months ago with his firm and adroit handling of his State of the Union address in which he spontaneously talked down his Maga hecklers.Biden cannot hope for a recovery through a future performance. There is not another State of the Union. The acceptance speech at the Democratic national convention will be read through a teleprompter. There will almost certainly not be a second debate with Trump. What’s in it for Trump? He has already banked what he needs, a gift beyond his wildest dreams, not to mention Putin’s. Trump will not lend Biden a second chance. And would Biden’s handlers risk it?Biden’s halting image will cast a shadow over any message he wishes to make. He will not be able to deflect the fake videos because of the real debate. He will not be able to have his aides explain his capability as chief executive without doubt falling on him.Biden’s age had been set aside until the debate. His accomplishments are the result of his political skill, experience and knowledge. For the Democratic party, Biden was a political necessity. The center held around him. His renewed candidacy prevented a tumultuous free-for-all. But his ability to run on the platform he has built through three and a half years has been severely undermined in 90 minutes.Biden has run for more reasons than his grasp of the state of the party. He understands the state of the world. Biden has held together the center of the western alliance. He decided he would run again because he was the crucial leader at an unprecedented, perilous time. His premise that he must win the presidency to sustain the west against the overarching menace of Putin and his sidekick Trump has been the fundamental reason for his second candidacy.Post-debate, Biden soldiers on. He flies to fundraisers. He campaigns. He is overcoming another obstacle in the pattern of his story, his self-image up from underestimation. But if Biden is not politically viable, the stakes not only remain but are even higher than ever. The cause is always greater than the man.
      Sidney Blumenthal, former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, has published three books of a projected five-volume political life of Abraham Lincoln: A Self-Made Man, Wrestling With His Angel and All the Powers of Earth More

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      New York Times first US paper urging Biden to drop out of presidential race

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      The New York Times’s editorial board has called on Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 presidential race after a disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump.Biden’s poor performance sent leading Democrats into a panic on Thursday night, after the US president appeared shaky and at points struggled to finish sentences. It amplified fears about his age and fitness for office that it had been hoped the debate would allay.Shortly after the debate, senior Democrats including the vice-president, Kamala Harris, acknowledged Biden’s “slow start” but emphasised his “strong finish”, while others privately suggested he should step aside.In a move that will add further pressure on the White House, the New York Times editorial board said in an opinion piece on Friday that “the greatest public service [Biden] can now perform is to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election”.“The president appeared on Thursday night as the shadow of a great public servant,” it said. “He struggled to explain what he would accomplish in a second term. He struggled to respond to [Trump’s] provocations. He struggled to hold [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.”“Biden is not the man he was four years ago,” it added.Earlier in the day, the leading New York Times columnist Thomas L Friedman called on his “friend” to step aside. “Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election,” he said.The former US president Barack Obama defended Biden in a social media post on Friday. “Bad debate nights happen,” he said. “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.”In a campaign stop in North Carolina on Friday, Biden appeared far more energised and coherent. He acknowledged his widely panned debate performance.“I don’t walk as easily as I used to, I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to, I don’t debate as well as I used to,” Biden said. “But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth.”The New York Times has become the first US newspaper to call on Biden to drop out of the race, but other influential publications including the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and the Atlantic have published op-eds by their leading columnists calling on Biden to step aside. Journal columnist Peggy Noonan said allowing Biden to continue “looks like elder abuse”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn 2020, the New York Times jointly endorsed Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren in the Democratic primary.In response to the NYT’s call, the Biden campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond told CNN: “The last time Joe Biden lost the New York Times editorial board’s endorsement, it turned out pretty well for him.”Biden and Trump are neck and neck in national polls for November. A New York Times/Sienna poll published this week before the debate found that Trump had a three-point lead over Biden. In the “battleground” states that are key to winning the White House, Trump is ahead in six out of seven, according to RealClearPolling. More

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      Trump claims ‘big victory’ over Biden despite lying in debate

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      Donald Trump wasted no time bringing up Thursday’s debate at a rally in Virginia on Friday.“Hello, Virginia,” he opened to a crowd in Chesapeake. “Did anybody last night watch a thing called the debate?”The former president said he scored a “big victory” over Joe Biden in a debate that, from its outset, showed the Democratic president failing to make coherent points. Biden spent a week at Camp David preparing to debate and got the rules, date and moderators he wanted, Trump said, but it did not help.“He studied so hard that he didn’t know what the hell he was doing,” Trump said. “No amount of rest or rigging could help him defend his atrocious record.”Trump lied profusely during the debate, skirting questions about his role in the January 6 insurrection and political violence. But he outperformed Biden on the optics, landing insults and pivoting to talk about what he wanted, with light moderation by CNN.Biden’s performance led Democrats to contemplate publicly whether he could be replaced as the Democratic candidate at such a late date. Some Biden defenders – and Biden himself – have since sought to reassure that the debate was just one bad performance and not indicative of his ability to lead, or representative of his policy record.While Democrats scrambled, Republicans basked in the Biden flop, but worried whether or how a different Democrat could take his place. Trump’s campaign ran an advertisement along those lines, showing Biden tripping up stairs and struggling to put on a jacket.“Will he make it four years?” the ad pondered. “And you know who’s coming behind him. Vote Joe Biden today, get Kamala Harris tomorrow.”Trump posted clips of his golf game, and Biden’s, on Truth Social, a retort to Biden’s claims that he had a low golf handicap. And he shared some clips from the debate, both ones where he made his key points and others where Biden stumbled. “WOW – WHAT IS HE SAYING?!” Trump wrote of Biden’s biggest gaffe, where he inexplicably said: “We finally beat Medicare.”Biden’s performance, some said, was a sign of his advanced age and how it was affecting his mental acuity. But Trump said age was not the deciding factor here – perhaps because Trump is, at 78, just three years younger than Biden.And at the Virginia rally, he sought to attack Bidenfor making the country a “banana republic” rather than his age. He said the president’s biggest problem was not his “personal decline”, but what his administration has done, citing immigration and climate crisis policies.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“He’s got no problem other than his competence,” Trump told the Virginia crowd. Trump said he knows people much older doing much better than Biden.Despite speculation that other prominent Democrats – such as Harris or California governor Gavin Newsom – could be installed on the ticket instead of Biden, Trump said he did not believe that would happen. Biden does better in the polls than these other Democrats, he claimed. “I have no idea what’s going to happen,” he said.The debate was a “big moment for people with common sense”, Trump claimed.He said people should not wonder whether Biden can make it through a 90-minute debate, but “whether America can survive four more years of crooked Joe Biden in the White House. In fact, I don’t know if we really can survive five more months.” More

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      Biden comes out swinging in first speech after presidential debate with Trump

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      In what several supporters described as a “night and day” difference from his performance in last night’s debate, President Joe Biden on Friday vowed to keep fighting against what he framed as an existential threat to America.In his first campaign stop following the debate, Biden showed off a louder and more dynamic voice at the North Carolina state fairgrounds in Raleigh.“I know what millions of Americans know,” Biden said. “When you get knocked down, you get back up.”During the 15-minute speech in a sweltering building that saw at least one person faint, Biden ran through a list of issues from high-speed internet to border security, but spent a good deal of his time denouncing Donald Trump’s honesty and integrity.“I don’t walk as easily as I used to, I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to, I don’t debate as well as I used to,” Biden said, addressing the widespread criticism of his Thursday performance. “But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth.”Repeating a line from the debate, he said of Trump, his rival for the White House, “I spent 90 minutes on a stage debating a guy who has the morals of an alley cat.” Biden added: “I think he [Trump] set a new record for the number of lies told at a single debate.”Although there was enough empty room in some of the bleachers for people to move around easily, the crowd shouted an encouraging: “Yes, you can!” when Biden began to talk about how well he could do the job of president in what would be his mid-80s.If some in the crowd came to the rally holding their breath, many seemed relieved to see more energy from the Democratic president.“Night and day,” said Brenda Pollard, a delegate to the Democratic national convention from Durham, North Carolina. “I mean, to me, today was who he is. And there it is, just like I just said, he’s energized by the people. Last night he didn’t have that. That’s no excuse, but I think it played a factor in it.”Pollard was one of the Biden supporters who met the president on the tarmac when his plane landed at Raleigh-Durham international airport at about 2am Friday.Pollard said she would not consider nominating any other candidate but Biden at the convention and had not heard any “serious” talk about doing so, despite many voters, pundits and operatives suggesting that was the Democrats’ only way forward.Biden played to the North Carolina crowd after he was introduced by the state’s popular and outgoing Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, who at one point was himself mentioned as a possible 2024 presidential candidate.“I want you to know, I’m not promising not to take Roy away from North Carolina,” Biden said.One of the hallmarks of Cooper’s time in office has been his negotiation with the state’s Republican-controlled legislature to expand Medicaid coverage last year. Margaret Kimber, a grandmother from Wendell, North Carolina, gave Biden much credit for the expansion as well.“It helps with the insurance, the supplements are fantastic,” she said while leaning against her walker after the rally. “And without them, whew!”Pollard also said that Biden’s support of social security and Medicare were some of the most important issues for her.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The loans are for the next generation. That’s our future coming in,” she said. “But we’re seniors and we’ve invested in this country and we have paid in. And now we just want that. It’s not an entitlement. We paid for it. It’s ours. And President Trump wants to take it.”Kimber said that the issues that matter most to the young people she knows are school safety and gun violence. She said she thought Trump’s focus on immigration restrictions was just an appeal to fear.“Because people were pissed off that the borders were open, Trump is using that as a tool to scare the people of the United States, and he’s using scare tactics to make people think that if we don’t close the borders we’re going to be overrun,” Kimber said. “And we’re going to be overrun with guns and violence. And we already have guns and violence.”Wesley Boykin, who ran as a Democrat for the state legislature in 2022 in rural Duplin county, said that education, safety and healthcare were the issues that drew him most to Biden. Boykin said that as a Black man, he felt fear when Trump was president and no longer has the same fear during the Biden administration.Boykin also said the Raleigh speech was a welcome departure from what he called a “lackluster” performance by the president on Thursday, especially the first seven minutes.“I concluded nine o’clock is not the appropriate time,” he said. “After he basically woke up – after that seven minutes – he was more like he was today. And I realized he didn’t get a great deal of sleep.”Boykin and others said that economic issues were not as important to them in this campaign as issues of character. Biden hit Trump on both fronts, reusing his “morals of an alley cat” line and calling his challenger “Donald ‘Herbert Hoover’ Trump”, after the Republican president who was in office at the onset of the Great Depression.Tina Bruner, a Democratic precinct chair in Raleigh and mother of three school-age children, said Biden’s handling of the pandemic demonstrated both his character and what she said was his superior economic policy.“The way Trump handled the pandemic was terrifying, and I immediately felt like we’re going to make it out of this whenever Joe took over. The vaccine rollout happened and the way school lunches were funded for everyone. I don’t think I could have counted on schoolchildren to be fed by Trump.”“So, yes, my life definitely felt safer, my family felt safer because of Joe Biden,” she said. More

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      Biden’s dire debate performance spurs anguished calls to withdraw from race

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      Panicking Democrats were speculating about whether Joe Biden should be replaced as their party’s nominee for US president following a disastrous debate performance that turned whispers about his age and fitness into a roar.Biden’s shaky, raspy-voiced showing against Donald Trump at the first presidential debate in Atlanta on Thursday was widely panned as a disaster that, instead of assuaging fears about his mental acuity, amplified them on the biggest political stage.Even before the torturous 90 minutes were over, senior Democratic figures and donors were calling or texting in despair and exploring the potential to draft a late alternative to Biden at August’s Democratic national convention, although elected officials remained publicly loyal to the president.“Every Democrat I know is texting that this is bad,” Ravi Gupta, a former Barack Obama campaign aide, wrote on X. “Just say it publicly and begin the hard work of creating space in the convention for a selection process. I’ll vote for a corpse over Trump, but this is a suicide mission.”On Friday, Biden appeared at a campaign rally in North Carolina, where he gave an entirely more spirited performance, landing his lines with much greater force than the previous night and attacking his opponent with vigour.“Did you see Trump last night? It’s sincerely a new record for the most lies told in a single debate,” Biden told an enthusiastic crowd that spontaneously broke into chants of “Four more years”.He challenged Trump on his lies about the economy, the pandemic, and the January 6 insurrection, called Trump a “one-man crime wave” and added: “The thing that bothers me most about him is that he has no respect for women or the law.”Biden also reiterated his standard campaign promises to restore the right to abortion and to defend Medicare and social security, and added, in a pointed nod to his debate showing that had the crowd roaring its appreciation: “When you get knocked down you get back up.”View image in fullscreenBut observers were left wondering where Friday’s energetic Biden was the night before, after the president had spent nearly a week at the Camp David presidential retreat preparing for the debate. He even sold cans of water labeled “Dark Brandon’s Secret Sauce” on his campaign website, mocking suggestions from Trump and his advisers that he would use drugs to enhance his performance.The debate’s early date and rules – no studio audience and muted microphones to prevent interruptions – had been requested by the Biden campaign, eager to bring voter’s attention to the discussion and the threat posed by Trump. They wanted the president to demonstrate strength and energy.But the plan backfired spectacularly in Biden’s performance, which was punctuated by repeated stumbles over words, uncomfortable pauses and a quiet speaking style that was often difficult to understand. The president lost his train of thought at times, especially early on, and Trump was quick to capitalise: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.”The former president projected confidence, even when he was blatantly wrong on the facts, and seemed younger and sharper than Biden. David Plouffe, a former campaign manager for Obama, told MSNBC: “They’re three years apart. They seemed about 30 years apart tonight.” He described Biden’s performance as a “Defcon 1 moment”.Biden rallied somewhat later in the debate, launching some deeply personal attacks on his opponent, but it was too late to change his first impression. His campaign aides blamed his hoarse voice on a cold, but his split screen reactions to Trump – open mouth, eyes cast down – underlined his status as the oldest president in history.US elections 2024: a guide to the first presidential debate
      Biden v Trump: 90 miserable minutes
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      Trump and Biden’s claims – factchecked
      Biden’s surrogates were slow to enter the post-debate spin room in Atlanta and, when they finally emerged, they largely avoided questions from the press. Instead they railed against Trump’s long list of falsehoods during the debate, which were not flagged by CNN’s fact checkers.At a Waffle House restaurant in Atlanta, Biden was asked whether he had any concerns about his performance. He replied: “No. It’s hard to debate a liar.”But Democratic strategists and rank-and-file voters alike were publicly and privately questioning whether the party might yet swap him out for a younger standard bearer against Trump in November’s election.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionClaire McCaskill, a former Democratic senator, told MSNBC that her phone was “blowing up” with senators, operatives and donors in deep alarm. “Joe Biden had one thing he had to do tonight, and he didn’t do it,” she said. “He had one thing he had to accomplish, and that was reassure America that he was up to the job at his age, and he failed at that tonight.”McCaskill added: “I’m not the only one whose heart is breaking right now. There’s a lot of people who watched this tonight and felt terribly for Joe Biden. I don’t know if things can be done to fix this.”Two influential New York Times columnists, Tom Friedman and Nick Kristof, expressed dismay at the showing and called on the president to bow out of the race.Under current Democratic party rules it would be difficult, if not impossible, to replace Biden as the party’s nominee without his cooperation or without party officials being willing to rewrite its rules at the convention in Chicago.The president won the overwhelming majority of Democratic delegates during the state-by-state primary process. Party rules state: “Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.”However, if polling suggests that Biden might hurt congressional candidates in down ballot races, donor money could dry up and pressure could mount on him to gracefully step aside. That might involve a delegation of party elders convening a meeting with the president and pleading with him to pass the torch.Such a move would trigger a frenzied, potentially divisive contest for the nomination with possible contenders including vice-president Kamala Harris, California governor Gavin Newsom, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Maryland governor Wes Moore, transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg and even former first lady Michelle Obama.Steve Schmidt, a political strategist who worked on the election campaigns of Republicans George W Bush and John McCain, wrote on his Substack: “Joe Biden lost his presidency last night, but because it happened in June, it does not mean that Trump will win … It is time for Joe Biden to begin the preparations necessary to put the country first. They will require him to say the following: ‘I will not accept my party’s nomination for a second term.’”Others, however, took the view that there is still time to recover after what was the earliest-ever presidential debate. Many voters have not yet tuned into an election that is still more than four months away. The Biden campaign announced that it has raised $14m on Thursday night and Friday morning – money that can be spent on advertising and swing state infrastructure.Trump remains a hugely polarising figure with historic vulnerabilities, including his conviction last month in New York in a case involving hush money payments to the adult film performer Stormy Daniels, his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his chaotic term in office. Biden described him as a “whiner” and “child” who cheated on his wife with “a porn star” and had the “morals of an alley cat”.There is precedent for recovering from rough debate performances, including Obama’s rebound from a poor showing against Mitt Romney in 2012. John Fetterman, Democratic senator of Pennsylvania, went on to defeat a Republican rival in 2022 after struggling through a debate several months after experiencing a stroke.Fetterman tweeted on Friday: “I refuse to join the Democratic vultures on Biden’s shoulder after the debate. No one knows more than me that a rough debate is not the sum total of the person and their record.”Newsom, who was Biden’s most prominent surrogate in the Atlanta spin room, urged Democrats not to melt down. He said: “I think it’s unhelpful. And I think it’s unnecessary. We’ve got to go in, we’ve got to keep our heads high. We’ve got to have the back of this president. You don’t turn back because of one performance. What kind of party does that?” More

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      Joe Biden bombed during the debate. But who will ask him to step down?

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      In March 1968, President Lyndon Johnson abandoned his re-election bid, citing the “awesome duties of this office”, partisan divisions in the country and “America’s sons in the fields far away” in Vietnam. “I shall not seek, and will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president,” Johnson said.It was a remarkable moment, recalls veteran Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf: “No one gives up being the most powerful person in the world,” he says. “It just doesn’t happen.”But LBJ was an exception, Sheinkopf says, in part because of his wife. Lady Bird Johnson “was not wild about the idea of becoming a political spouse”, biographer Julia Sweig wrote.On Friday, as the White House mounted a push-back against calls for Joe Biden to abandon his re-election bid to allow another Democrat to step in, there is a dawning reality that despite Biden’s catastrophic debate performance the night before, the decision to step aside or remain and potentially go on to a catastrophic defeat is his to make, and his alone.And without any formal mechanism for Democrats to force Biden to step aside, the job of convincing him to do so would likely fall to Biden’s closest adviser: the first lady.US elections 2024: a guide to the first presidential debate
      Biden v Trump: 90 miserable minutes
      Who won the meme wars?
      Biden’s performance sends Democrats into panic
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      Jill Biden has reacted forcefully in the past against calls for her to persuade her husband to step down, including to taunts that she is “guilty of elder abuse” and is said to enjoy the trappings of White House prestige. In Atlanta on Thursday, she led her husband off the stage and was heard to tell him: “Joe, you did such a great job! You answered every question, you knew all the facts!”Others in Biden’s inner circle who may have the ear of the president include Biden’s younger sister, Valerie Biden Owens, who has played a key role throughout the president’s political career; campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez; campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon; campaign senior adviser Anita Dunn; and adviser Ron Klain.Alongside them are senior Democrats, some of whom fear that Biden’s weak re-election chances will drag down Democrat hopes to retain control of the Senate and retake Congress.Party heavyweights Bill Clinton and wife Hillary, who voiced her support for Biden on Friday, are key Biden backers who have his ear, as are former house speaker Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, South Carolina congressman James Clyburn – who helped turn around Biden’s campaign in 2019 – and Delaware senator Chris Coons.But ultimately, it may be big Democrat donors whose pressure makes the biggest difference. The aging political leadership in US politics is ultimately a reflection of the elders’ proven ability to fundraise – but that ability on Biden’s part may now be threatened. One Democratic fundraiser who planned to attend a debate performance in the Hamptons on Saturday evening said Biden’s performance was “a disaster”, CNBC reported, and called it “worse than I thought was possible”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Everyone I’m speaking with thinks Biden should drop out,” the network quoted the person as saying. Another said simply: “Game over.”According to Sheinkopf, Democrats are in uncharted waters. “It’s a terrible position to be in, but on the other side you have Donald Trump, who many people do not like, more they detest him, but he has a loyal following. He may not have acquitted himself as a liar last night but he appeared strong and not in any way weak.“The only way Biden can leave is to leave himself, and he can’t leave unless there’s a replacement Democrats can agree on.”But any agreement is far off, except perhaps one: “Democrats will do everything they can not to have Kamala Harris because her polling numbers are atrocious and she is not trusted to be commander-in-chief at a time conflict is breaking out throughout the world.”The unenviable job of breaking the news to the US president falls now to one person, Sheinkopf said: “The most logical person to suggest to Biden he not do this for his health and for the good of the country is Jill Biden.” More