Joe Biden’s concerning performance at the Thursday night debate with former President Donald Trump was not what Democrats were hoping for. The Biden campaign needed the president to go out on stage and take on Trump in a manner that inspired confidence in the Democratic Party that their presumptive candidate had the necessary energy and coherence to fulfill the duties of the presidency.
Following the highly anticipated debate, a CNN panel sounded the alarm over the implications surrounding Biden’s debate performance. CNN Chief National Correspondent John King began the roundtable discussion, pointing out that the debate sparked conversations within the Democratic Party as to whether Biden should seek reelection.
“As we speak, there is a deep, a wide and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party. It started minutes into the debate, and it continues right now. It involves party strategists. It involves elected officials. It involves fundraisers, and they’re having conversations about the President’s performance, which they think was dismal, which they think will hurt other people down the party, in the ticket, and they’re having conversations about what they should do about it. Some of those conversations include, should we go to the White House and ask the president step aside? Others are other. The conversations are about, should prominent Democrats go public with that call because they feel this debate was so terrible. They do say in moments in the debate Later, the President got better and got his footing, but then at the end, even his closing statement was a little halting. The contrast between the two candidates, let me be clear, none of them, and a lot of Republicans don’t think Donald Trump had a great night,” King said.
CNN anchor Abby Phillips chimed in, claiming that the “panic” she is observing among Democrats outweighs anything she has observed up until this point in the Biden campaign. “I mean, the panic that I am hearing from Democrats is not like anything that I have heard in this campaign so far,” she said.
Phillips continued, illustrating the damage that Biden did to his perception among American voters, particularly in the Democratic base. “So there’s a real concern here tonight that there’s been some real damage done that cannot be undone. Biden solidified the perception among voters, but especially among his base. They were hoping that tonight would be a game changer. They are now seeing a president who is in the White House who they do not necessarily believe can can do this for another four years,” she explained.
Former Trump campaign advisor David Urban emphasized that Biden’s entire debate performance was an “unmitigated disaster” from the moment the event began. “If anybody in America thinks that that was even close to being an okay debate by Joe Biden, I’m living in a parallel universe. That was an unmitigated disaster for President. Biden, from the second he walked out to the closing statement,” he said.
CNN political commentator Van Jones offered a somber view of the debate, where he noted how “painful” it was to observe Joe Biden on the debate stage. He painted the president as a man who loved his country and was doing “the best that he can” to lead the nation. Watch the panelists below:
“That was painful. I love Joe Biden. I worked for Joe Biden. He didn’t do well at all. He did not do well at all…. But that was not what we needed from Joe Biden, and it’s personally painful for a lot of people. It’s not just panic, it’s pain of what we saw tonight,” he said.
Note: The featured image is a screenshot from the embedded video.
"*" indicates required fields