President Biden and his allies are increasingly sending a message to Democrats who are upset by Biden’s performance in last week’s debate and wondering whether they should withdraw from the campaign: “Joe Biden is a man who bounces back from terrible personal setbacks, and the debate is just another opportunity for him to demonstrate his resilience.”
“Joe Biden is a human being. Regardless of his title, he is someone who has dealt with tragedy,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday. “He is someone who has faced that tragedy head-on. He is someone who knows how to get back up after being knocked down.”
The attempts to describe the debate as a “bad day” and the president as a “comeback kid” reflect an increasingly clear disconnect between Biden’s aides and many in the Democratic Party. A growing number of Democrats see Biden’s performance, in which he at times struggled to finish sentences, as reflecting deeper problems in the party rather than an episode in his history of overcoming adversity.
And they emphasize how high the stakes are.
“Instead of reassuring voters, the president has failed to effectively defend his many accomplishments and expose Mr. Trump’s many lies,” Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, who on Tuesday became the first Democrat to call for Biden to resign, said in a statement. “President Biden has led us [former president Donald] Trump in 2020. Don’t hand us over to Trump in 2024.”
Overcoming adversity has long been central to Biden’s identity: His Senate career began with the deaths of his wife and daughter in a 1972 car accident, and his son Beau died in 2015. Biden lost his first two runs for president, was ousted in 2016 and suffered crushing defeats in Iowa and New Hampshire in the 2020 primaries.
The effort to map Biden’s current challenges into his record of overcoming obstacles comes as the president’s advisers try to stave off criticism from some influential figures that his candidacy is doomed.
Influential publications, liberal commentators and former officials have called for Biden to drop out of the presidential race after failing to assuage concerns about his age and mental health. No prominent Democratic official has called for him to drop out, but worried lawmakers are having private discussions about whether Biden’s continued candidacy risks encouraging the Democrats’ worst nightmare: a return to the White House.
Even some of Biden’s longtime allies have warned that the current crisis is unlike any of the tragedies he has weathered before. Former Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who worked with Biden for more than two decades, said Biden deserves credit for his career in public office but that he needs to make the “altruistic” decision to step aside.
“Protecting American democracy is more important than loyalty to any one person,” Harkin said in a text message. “I hope that his wife and family will persuade him to do the selfless and courageous thing and announce his retirement from government, effective next January, and release his deputies.”
Far from encouraging him to retire, Biden’s family has been among the most vocal advocates for him to stay on for a second term, and they used a recent two-day retreat at Camp David to boost Biden’s morale and showcase his commitment.
Those families, along with Mr. Biden’s inner circle of advisers, have watched him weather challenges over the years and have come to reflect his confidence, people familiar with their thinking said.At Mr. Biden’s family gathering at Camp David, the president was encouraged to stay on the path by the group of people he regularly turns to when he faces political or personal challenges, said two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
“They have that perspective because they’ve been through much worse,” said one person with knowledge of the situation. “You have bad days, but you keep moving forward.”
Some allies and concerned lawmakers were heartened by Biden’s strong appearance in Raleigh, North Carolina, the day after the debate, and his speech before a raucous crowd was well-received and became the centerpiece of new campaign ads.
Former Sen. Ted Kaufman, a Delaware Democrat and one of Biden’s lifelong friends, said the president has developed an “inner confidence” from repeatedly defiantly defying his opponents over the years.
“Having overcome difficult situations has created an environment where he can wake up in the morning confident in his ability to meet the challenge before him, not what happened last night or yesterday or the day before,” Kaufman said in an interview.
But some critics of the calm approach worry that Biden and his aides’ inner confidence is out of step with the precarious position he and his party find themselves in after the debate. They have been waiting to see whether Biden, 81, would address concerns about his age more directly or change how he approaches the campaign, but so far the results have been disappointing.
Some donors and weaker Democrats told the people they felt the campaign was gaslighting them by claiming Biden’s poor debate performance was a blip rather than a reflection of mounting evidence of his declining ability, according to two Democratic lawmakers who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
Biden acknowledged signs of aging at a rally in North Carolina, saying his speech, walking style and debating skills have deteriorated over the years, but aides said the assertion was far from a winning message for Democrats.
Campaign officials say presenting Biden as “America’s Comeback Kid,” as New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, put it on Saturday, could help win over skeptical voters.
The campaign ad, featuring Biden’s speech in North Carolina, debuted Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” one of several cable shows debating whether the president should withdraw from the race.
Early viewers of the show will have heard host Mika Brzezinski, who, along with her husband Joe Scarborough, has a personal relationship with Biden, make a powerful case for why Biden should continue campaigning.
“This moment in our campaign speaks to the story of Joe Biden’s life,” she said. “In his personal and professional life, Biden has repeatedly risen from rock bottom.”
For the next 10 minutes, she recounted the president’s personal history of trials and triumphs, including a near-fatal aneurysm in 1988, the death of Beau, his son Hunter’s felony conviction and a presidency that has weathered setbacks and turmoil to produce a long legislative record.
Some of the most defining moments of Biden’s life have involved his presidential campaign, when he was forced to make the tough decision to run or withdraw.
In 2020, Biden suffered embarrassing losses in early nominating states, coming in fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire. While some strategists suggested the former vice president should end his presidential bid cleanly, he went to South Carolina and gave his campaign a boost with a win there.
“To those of you who were defeated, abandoned and left behind, this is your campaign,” Biden said in his victory speech. “Just a few days ago, the press and the pundits declared this candidate’s race was over. Now, thanks to you, the heart of the Democratic Party, we have won. … And we are alive.”
He then won the Democratic nomination that November, defeating Trump, a victory that bolstered his confidence and further undermined trust in polls and experts.
Biden also faced a tough decision about whether to run in 2016, when Hillary Clinton was already in the running for president and had garnered significant support from party elites. In his 2017 book, “Promise Me, Dad,” Biden detailed how many Democratic Party officials, including President Obama, discouraged him from running, suggesting he couldn’t win. He ultimately decided not to run, citing his grief over Beau’s death.
Clinton lost the 2016 general election to Trump, and the development deepened doubts about those who had discouraged Biden from running. Biden has since suggested he could have prevented Trump from entering the White House in the first place. He later said he “regrets every day” his decision to drop out of the race in 2016.
Biden and his supporters have since suggested that even if he stumbles in the debate, he remains uniquely positioned to beat Trump in the November debate.
“I think he’s the only Democrat who can beat Donald Trump,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Delaware) said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
Still, Biden’s strong confidence in his political abilities may be one of the reasons he struggled in the debates, some historians say, pointing to a long history of incumbent candidates stumbling in their first debates.
“You don’t get into the presidency without an Olympic-level competitive spirit, so he must have believed he could prove the doubters wrong,” said Russell Riley, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.
He said Biden probably thought he could easily defeat Trump in the debate, adding: “That obviously didn’t happen.”
Tyler Pager, Dan Baltz and Lee Ann Caldwell contributed to this report.
