Top Biden staffers seek to calm nervous donors after dismal debate performance

ATLANTA — Joe Biden’s top campaign staffers tried to quickly and forcefully project calm in a private, previously scheduled meeting with donors and bundlers Friday following a disastrous performance in his first debate against Donald Trump.

They argued it wasn’t a “campaign killer.” Staffers touted grassroots fundraising numbers. Biden’s campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon told them that there was no easy way to get Biden out of the race — or name a new nominee.

The private gathering — the campaign’s first critical attempt at damage control in the immediate aftermath of the dismal debate — failed to calm all the attendees.

Some were cheered by the presentation. Others felt that the staffers were chastising them for being anxious hand-wringers, ignoring the reality in front of them. Donors said the campaign acknowledged that they have to sharpen their message. But at least one said there appeared to be “no change” in strategy.

One donor even directly asked campaign officials if Biden was going to drop out.

“They’re saying, ‘We just had one bad night,’” said a prominent Democratic donor familiar with the event. “What they’re missing, a vital point they’re missing, is it’s not just one bad night. … There’s no fixing this.”

This article is based on interviews with more than a dozen Democratic donors, operatives and White House staffers. Many were granted anonymity to freely discuss Biden’s debate performance and the campaign’s attempt to quiet fears.

Friday’s meeting — which featured O’Malley Dillon, campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez and deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks — was an effort to reassure the only group of people, besides the president himself, with the power to pull the plug on the campaign. They’re forcefully rejecting calls that he will step aside, pointing to the campaign’s small-dollar fundraising success as proof that there’s still energy behind Biden’s candidacy.

And there’s particular concern for how the donor community may react.

“The biggest problem is donors. If the money dries up, everybody will start to panic,” said one Democratic operative and close adviser to several members of Congress.

Major Democratic donors received inquiries from senior White House officials, soliciting input for what to do following the debate — a sign of traditional donor management.

“I do think it’s incumbent on the campaign to acknowledge that this was a mistake — to do a debate the way they did, to do it before the convention, to do it in a format he’s not good in,” said one Democratic donor who described the texts from senior officials. “There have to be some repercussions, and the sooner someone in campaign leadership accepts responsibility for last night, the sooner other questions about Biden as the nominee will quiet down.”

The unease permeated Capitol Hill, where one House Democrat said there’s a strong desire to “find a way out of it.”

“We just don’t have consensus on what that would mean,” the lawmaker said.

Inside the White House and Wilmington campaign headquarters, officials privately acknowledged that the president fared poorly in his showdown with Trump, not only missing a chance to quiet doubts about his age but returning them to the very forefront of the campaign, according to four people.

But their instinct was to fight, with surrogates fanning out on the airwaves to dismiss talk of Biden bowing out while campaign officials reached out to nervous Democrats to try to quiet any public calls for a replacement.

“He didn’t have the best night on the debate stage. But you’d rather have one bad night than a candidate with a bad vision for where he wants to take the country,” campaign communications director Michael Tyler told reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday.

He said Biden was committed to participating in a second debate in September and that there are “no conversations” about Biden stepping aside. He also said the campaign was not considering any staffing changes. And over the next two days, Biden will appear at three major fundraisers in New York, including the largest LGBTQ+ fundraising event, according to the campaign.

Biden staffers and outside advisers dismissed the post-debate chatter as Democratic hysteria that would pass in the days ahead. Still, those closest to the president believe that the next three to four days would be crucial in determining whether Biden would face a groundswell of calls to step aside that the campaign would be unable to endure, according to the people.

If that were to happen — which officials continued to doubt — the list of people who could hold sway over Biden is small and, the people said, begins with his family.

The loudest voice belongs to first lady Jill Biden, who delivered a fiery defense of her husband in the hours after the debate Thursday night and repeated that sentiment to confidants on Friday, according to three of the people. Other members of Biden’s family and friends blamed the president’s poor performance on the debate preparations, believing it was too focused on statistics and not enough on performance, according to one of the people.

Others said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer could have sway with Biden if he made the argument that Biden remaining at the top of the ticket could cost Democrats both houses of Congress, according to two of those not authorized to speak publicly. Biden’s sister, Valerie, as well as a few other key figures — including Barack Obama and Rep. Jim Clyburn — also could be among those whom the president would have to listen to if one of them approached them about reevaluating his future.

But Biden officials strenuously pushed back at the idea that any of that would happen, believing that in a largely static race, the post-debate polling hit would be fairly slight and recoverable and that Biden was still positioned to beat Trump. Both Clyburn and Obama put out statements of support on Friday. And Biden delivered a stronger performance at his Raleigh rally acknowledging that “I don’t debate as well as I used to” but insisting he knew “right from wrong” and “how to get things done.”

But Biden’s poor showing at the debate now puts even more pressure on a series of upcoming events that will further shape the campaign, beginning with the NATO summit in Washington in two weeks. That will be followed by Trump's criminal sentencing on July 11 and then both parties’ conventions — the Republicans in Milwaukee in mid-July, the Democrats a month later in Chicago — as the summer winds down.

And, assuming both candidates honor their commitments, the second and final scheduled debate between the two men is set for eleven weeks from now, kicking off the final two-month sprint until Election Day.

Holly Otterbein, Adam Cancryn, Jennifer Haberkorn and Daniella Diaz contributed reporting.