Dems freak out over Biden’s debate performance: ‘Biden is toast’

All Joe Biden needed to do was deliver a repeat performance of his State of the Union address.

Instead, he stammered. He stumbled. And, with fewer than five months to November, he played straight into Democrats’ worst fears — that he’s fumbling away this election to Donald Trump.

The alarm bells for Democrats started ringing the second Biden started speaking in a haltingly hoarse voice. Minutes into the debate, he struggled to mount an effective defense of the economy on his watch and flubbed the description of key health initiatives he's made central to his reelection bid, saying “we finally beat Medicare” and incorrectly stating how much his administration lowered the price of insulin. He talked himself into a corner on Afghanistan, bringing up his administration’s botched withdrawal unprompted. He repeatedly mixed up “billion” and “million,” and found himself stuck for long stretches of the 90-minute debate playing defense.

And when he wasn’t speaking, he stood frozen behind his podium, mouth agape, his eyes wide and unblinking for long stretches of time.

"Biden is toast — calling it now," said Jay Surdukowski, an attorney and Democratic activist from New Hampshire who co-chaired former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s 2016 presidential campaign in the state.

In text messages with POLITICO, Democrats expressed confusion and concern as they watched the first minutes of the event. One former Biden White House and campaign aide called it “terrible,” adding that they have had to ask themselves over and over: “What did he just say? This is crazy.”

“Not good,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) wrote.

POLITICO spoke to about a dozen Democrats, some of whom were granted anonymity to discuss Biden's performance.

Biden’s team was quick to defend the president’s performance. First they said he had a cold (and that he was negative for Covid-19). Then they insisted Trump was hurting himself by insulting Biden's presidential record.

Biden did grow stronger throughout the night, at one point seizing on Trump's reported dismissal of fallen soldiers as "suckers and losers" to skewer the former president as the real "sucker" and "loser." At others, he hammered Trump’s criminal conviction in New York.

"The only person on this stage who's a convicted felon is the man I'm looking at right now," Biden said.

But first impressions matter — particularly to voters just tuning into the election and who were more likely to watch the first debate than the second that’s scheduled for September. And instead of setting the tone of the next phase of the presidential campaign, Biden’s shaky performance reignited fears among Democrats that the octogenarian whose mental acuity and physical fitness have stood as voters’ chief concerns about returning him to the White House might not even be able to carry the party through to November.

"Time for an open convention,” one prominent operative texted.

Biden’s team had tried to engineer the debate in his favor — pushing for it to be early and without an audience. And the president agreed to hold the event in part to calm Democratic nerves over whether he could win in November.

Afterward they didn’t try to cover up his poor performance, but instead tried to emphasize that Trump remained a threat to American interests at home and abroad.

“It was a slow start, that’s obvious to everyone. I’m not going to debate that point,” Vice President Kamala Harris told CNN’s Anderson Cooper an hour after the debate wrapped. “I’m talking about the choice in November. I’m talking about one of the most important elections in our collective lifetime. And do we want to look at what November will bring and go on a course for America that is about a destruction of democracy?”

While some Democrats were quick to brush aside Biden’s blunders — Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) said Biden “isn’t a TV showman, he’s a workhorse” — the trajectory of the race appears dramatically changed.

“My job right now is to be really honest. Joe Biden had one thing he had to do tonight. And he didn’t do it,” former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) told MSNBC. “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.”

Already, some Democrats were openly saying that Biden should end his campaign. One major Democratic donor and Biden supporter said simply: “Biden needs to drop out. No question about it.”

Biden struggled at times to articulate strong arguments on some of his campaign’s biggest selling points, bungling his health care record and stumbling through a response on his support for abortion rights.

“I support Roe v. Wade. You have three trimesters. First time is between a woman and a doctor. Second time is between a doctor and an extreme situation. Third time is between the doctor — I mean, between the woman and the state,” he said.

Trump tripped, too. He called former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s daughter, a documentary filmmaker, a “fil-i-maker.” He accused Democrats of wanting to “take the life” of a child “after birth.” He inflated the country’s economic strength under his presidency.

He reiterated his defense of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, launching into a lengthy diatribe against the convictions of hundreds of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol in an effort to overturn the 2020 election. And asked repeatedly if he would accept the results of the election no matter the winner, Trump refused to give a straight answer — eventually specifying that he'd only do so "if the election is fair and free."

But Trump largely did what Republicans had begged him to do: show a modicum of restraint while also laying bare Biden’s weaknesses. The former president, who delights in calling Biden “sleepy” and “crooked” at every turn, waited a full 20 minutes to draw attention to the Democrat’s initially shaky performance.

“I really don't know what he said at the end of that sentence,” Trump said, after Biden stuttered through an answer to a question about immigration. “I don’t think he knows what he said, either.”

And in a relatively staid debate, it was Biden who fell short of even the lowest of expectations.

“Biden seems to have needed a few minutes to warm up," said one veteran Democratic operative. "Poor guy needs a tea. Maybe a whiskey.” Another suggested that Biden get a throat lozenge.

Both Biden and Trump, who is just three years younger than the incumbent, faced questions toward the end of the debate about their fitness for another four years of the presidency.

Biden, with a cough, urged voters to judge his competence based on his record, attacking Trump as "three years younger and a lot less competent."

"Look at the record. Look at what I've done," he said, reprising a line he's often deployed on the campaign trail.

Trump then offered his own meandering case for his aptitude, claiming to have "aced" a pair of cognitive tests and pointing to golf tournament championships he's won at his own golf course as evidence of his physical stamina.

The exchange quickly devolved into a game of one-upmanship — “I’m happy to play golf if you carry your own bag,” Biden shot back at one point. But by that point, many viewers’ opinions were likely long cemented.

Fergus Cullen, a former New Hampshire GOP chair and “Never Trumper” who is considering voting for Biden, had warned that Democrats would need to reconsider their ticket if the president delivered a poor performance on Thursday.

After the debate, Cullen said: “Anyone who has watched a parent grow old, frail, and foggy recognizes what they are seeing and knows it only gets worse, at an accelerating rate, from here.”

Nicholas Wu and Josh Siegel contributed to this report.