Democrats fret after Biden’s faltering debate performance

For months, U.S. President Joe Biden and his team have struggled to battle voters’ perception that he’s too old to serve another term in office. But in 90 minutes onstage Thursday night with millions of Americans watching, Mr. Biden delivered a performance that likely only aggravated those concerns.

Speaking softly, stumbling over his words, and at times trailing off midsentence, Mr. Biden met former President Donald Trump for a historically early first debate. The best thing that could be said for the president is that there’s still enough time before the election that voters might not have it top of mind. Mr. Biden’s debate performance left many Democrats deeply concerned that the 81-year-old appeared too old and feeble to beat Mr. Trump, with some even privately asking if he should stay in the race.

Democrats’ concerns set in early, as Mr. Biden, barely audible, struggled to get through his opening remarks. The worries hit a crescendo as the president seemed to lose his train of thought on a question about national debt. After looking down and struggling for words for three full seconds, Mr. Biden declared, “We finally beat Medicare.”

Moderators then turned to Mr. Trump, who pounced.

“He’s right – he did beat Medicare; he beat it to death; he destroyed Medicare,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Biden also bungled a question about abortion access – one of the issues on which polls show voters favor him by the widest margins – by pivoting in a non sequitur to immigration, one of the issues on which Mr. Trump has the biggest edge, while delivering a hard-to-follow answer.

Gerald Herbert/AP

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump addressed a wide range of issues in Thurday's Atlanta debate, but had to contend with the label "convicted felon" being hurled at him by his opponent.

Mr. Biden’s struggles onstage played directly into voters’ biggest concerns about his reelection campaign. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found that 70% of voters agreed that “Joe Biden is just too old to be an effective president.”

Many Democrats were aghast at his performance.

“It was pretty much an unmitigated disaster from top to bottom,” said one Democratic strategist who works with the White House, after requesting anonymity to be able to speak freely.

This strategist called for “at least a campaign shakeup,” calling it “malpractice” that the campaign had raised expectations for Mr. Biden’s debate performance. “Instead, we got gramps.”

“It’s just not good,” another Democratic strategist messaged. “It was so deeply unclear what [Biden] was trying to say that, even if you knew Trump’s responses were lies, you still would probably think he was doing better.”

Some Democrats even began privately questioning whether more than just a campaign shakeup was needed – and whether Mr. Biden should step aside in favor of someone else with a better shot of beating Mr. Trump.

Even many of Mr. Biden’s former aides acknowledged he’d had a bad night.

“This was not the debate performance that the Biden campaign team wanted or needed from this debate,” former Biden White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on MSNBC, warning that the “chatter” building about whether Mr. Biden should be replaced would be “very distracting.”

Still, other Democrats argued that the panic was overblown and that Mr. Biden would be judged on his record as president, not on one debate performance.

“You don’t turn your back [on a candidate] because of one performance. What kind of party does that?” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said on MSNBC, pushing back against rumblings from Democrats that Mr. Biden should step aside. “We’ve all had those nights. All of us,” he said.

If Mr. Biden faltered in terms of style, Mr. Trump misspoke on substance – repeatedly exaggerating or stating outright falsehoods. Mr. Trump claimed wrongly that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had refused a White House offer of National Guard support during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill riot, and that Mr. Biden “wants to raise your taxes by four times.” 

Much of the debate was focused on issues favorable to Mr. Trump, especially in the first half. Mr. Biden faced tough questions about inflation and immigration. And it took 40 minutes before the Jan. 6 Capitol riots were brought up. Mr. Biden’s soft-spoken and meandering response undercut his criticism of his predecessor for trying to overturn his 2020 election loss. It wasn’t until a few minutes later, halfway through the debate, that Mr. Trump’s felony conviction in his New York hush money case came up.

Gerald Herbert/AP

President Joe Biden gestures during the June 27 presidential debate on CNN from Atlanta, in which he defended his administration's record on the economy and foreign policy.

While Mr. Biden struggled for most of the debate, Mr. Trump showed an uncharacteristic level of discipline, proving to be more in control and better able to resist his worst impulses than he was in previous general-election debate performances. When asked about Jan. 6, for instance, rather than echo his campaign trail promises about pardoning jailed rioters, he tried to pivot from the subject while distancing himself from the riot.

Mr. Trump couldn’t fully tamp down his aggressive instincts, however, offering flashes of what polls show many voters dislike about him: bullying, bragging, and nonsensical comments. 

After Mr. Biden defended the level of support he’s given Israel during its war in Gaza, Mr. Trump accused him of being soft on Hamas. “He’s become like a Palestinian, but they don’t like him, because he’s a very bad Palestinian. He’s a weak one,” Mr. Trump said.

Mr. Trump also said, “I had the best environmental numbers ever, and my top environmental people gave me that statistic just before I walked on the stage.”

Later in the debate, Mr. Trump was asked about what he’d do to help parents facing the spiraling costs of child care. But he was so focused on pushing back on a pair of attacks lobbed by Mr. Biden – including one accurate remark that Mr. Trump had placed last in a ranking of presidents conducted by more than 150 presidential historians – that he twice didn’t answer the questions asked.

The end of the debate devolved into a childish argument over who was the better golfer.

Mr. Biden suggested Mr. Trump was lying about how much he weighed and said that he’d play him – if Mr. Trump was willing to carry his own golf clubs on the course. Mr. Trump shot back that Mr. Biden was lying about his golf handicap.

“I’ve seen your swing; I know your swing,” Mr. Trump said before catching himself. “Let’s not act like children.”

Mr. Biden warmed up for stretches as the debate wore on. But by the end, he seemed to be flagging again. In his closing statement, he needed to pause and clear his throat before continuing on. A minute later, he tripped over his words while discussing Medicare. 

There are still more than four months until Election Day. Other incumbent presidents have had rough first debates and bounced back to win reelection – Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama both got crushed in their first debates in 1984 and 2012, respectively. And there’s plenty of time for other events to shift the race. Mr. Trump faces sentencing in a few weeks for his criminal conviction in New York, for example.

But Mr. Biden did himself no favors on Thursday night.