OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
President Joe Biden is not thinking about withdrawing from the presidential race despite his terrible debate performance and a concerted lobbying campaign from the leftist media to do so, according to CNN’s Kayla Tausche.
CNN anchor John Berman on Friday morning asked: “Lot of questions for the Biden campaign. What are you hearing from the Biden team, Kayla?”
“Well, John, the Biden team as of this moment plans to pack up what few wins they had on the debate stage last night. You’ve already seen some of those packaged and posted on social media, and to move on and focus on what’s coming down the pike,” Tausche began.
“There are no plans, I’m told, for the president to drop out of the race and even further, I’m told that the president is still committed to a second debate in September, which is currently scheduled for September 10 and hosted by ABC News, much along the lines of the rules of the debate that was hosted last night,” Tausche added.
“Now, the adviser that I spoke with said that they’re not putting too much stock in the conversation last night, and that many of the staffers on the campaign and in the White House also worked on President Obama’s reelection in 2012. And they tried to draw the parallel to that first debate. That was a very low performance for President Obama, even he would call it a stinker. And they said that if you had believed the pundits in the wake of that debate, Mitt Romney would be president, would have been president after that,” she continued.
“But of course, the big difference is in the wake of that debate, no one in Obama’s own party was calling for him to resign the office of president. And that is the moment that Democrats find themselves in right now. The mood that I’m hearing from Democrats who are texting this morning is described as fatalistic behind the scenes,” she added.
Tausche concluded: “And while we’ve seen some of these public pronouncements from members of the president’s own party, there is still so much consternation about what happens next and whether the performance aspect of last night can even be fixed going forward. Because if not, that September debate is likely just to be a repeat of what we saw on stage last night, putting Democrats in the same position they’re in right now, even closer to Election Day. That being said, Biden himself did not seem to be fazed by it.”
WATCH:
JUST IN: CNN reports that the Biden campaign is not dropping out and is committed to the second debate in September pic.twitter.com/fgbnZvmGrE
— HOT SPOT (@HotSpotHotSpot) June 28, 2024
The media landscape has erupted in response to President Joe Biden’s horrific performance during the CNN Presidential Debate.
Responses have ranged from “dismal” critiques to outspoken requests from the left for him to get out of the 2024 contest.
Because of Biden’s comments, there have been discussions regarding whether the presumed Democratic nominee should withdraw from the contest to clear the way for an August convention contest for the nomination.
Politico relayed even more dire perspectives in articles, quoting Democratic operatives saying, “Biden is toast.” Another piece quoted an adviser of big Democratic donors that was even more blunt.
“Our only hope is that he bows out, we have a brokered convention, or dies,” the donor adviser said. “Otherwise we are f**king dead.”
“I mean it’s not great all around,” a down-ballot Democrat for statewide office told Politico. “Our president has a speech impediment, a cold, and is 81.”
“No one expected a master class in debating from Joe Biden, but no one expected this nose dive,” a senior aide to top Democratic officials told the publication. “He was bad on message, bad on substance, bad on counter punching, bad on presentation, bad on non-verbals. There was no bright spot in this debate for him. The only bright spot is that this happened in June and not October.”
CNN’s John King highlighted the “very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party” that started in the early stages of the debate.
“This was a game-changing debate in the sense that right now, 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,” King said.
“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,” King added.
Bloomberg Opinion editor Tim O’Brien wrote on X: “Trump’s taken control of the momentum of this debate — despite lying and living in an alternate reality — and Biden simply comes across as a somewhat dazed punching bag.”
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, a longtime Biden ally, wrote: “I cannot remember a more heartbreaking moment in American presidential campaign politics in my lifetime — precisely because of what it revealed: Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election.”
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote on X: “I wish Biden would reflect on this debate performance and then announce his decision to withdraw from the race, throwing the choice of Democratic nominee to the convention. Someone like @gretchenwhitmer or @SherrodBrown or @SecRaimondo could still jump in and beat Trump,” Kristof added, referring to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, and Biden’s Commerce Sec. Gina Raimondo.”
Alyssa Farah Griffin of “The View” said: “If Biden truly believes Democracy is on the line, he should step aside and let another Democrat step in to take on Trump. Put the country first.”
Vox correspondent Eric Levitz wrote: “Joe Biden should save his legacy by ending his candidacy.”
Financial Times associate editor Edward Luce panicked on X, writing: “This is a disaster. Democrats need to end their self-imposed censorship on Biden and fix this. There’s two months until the convention. Other countries hold general elections in less time than that.”
