48 hours to clean up a 90-minute mess: A look inside the Biden camp’s post-debate frenzy
US President Joe Biden, First Lady Jill Biden and their granddaughters travel to a campaign reception in New Jersey. (Photo: Reuters)
By Lisa Lerer, Shane Goldmacher and Katie Rogers
In the early hours of Friday morning, not long after President Biden walked offstage following a disastrous debate, his campaign chairman, Jen O’Malley Dillon, acknowledged in a series of private conversations with prominent supporters that the evening had gone poorly but urged them to not overreact.
Later Friday, top White House aides worked the phones, with Biden’s chief of staff, Jeff Zients, calling Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer to check in, according to a person familiar with the conversation. And by noon, the Biden campaign had turned its weekly all-staff call into a virtual pep rally to assuage any doubts creeping into campaign offices in Wilmington, Delaware, and beyond.
“Nothing fundamentally changed about this election last night,” Quentin Fulks, Mr. Biden’s deputy campaign manager, said, according to a recording of the all-staff meeting. “We’re going to take a hit. We’re going to strike back. When we get hit, we get up.”
The 48 hours after the debate have been a frenzied campaign within a campaign to salvage Mr. Biden’s suddenly faltering candidacy, a multi-day damage control effort to pressure and advocate for anxious Democrats.
For now, the gulf between the party’s most active supporters and its voters, who have for more than a year expressed concerns about the 81-year-old president’s fitness for another term, remains as wide as ever. Some Democrats are bracing for a drop in the polls after his shaky debate performance, which they say could revive calls for Biden’s replacement.
The efforts from Wilmington to Washington showed the extent of the damage Biden has done to his reelection campaign in just 90 minutes. His campaign has been criticized as insular and intrusive, so the burst of activity signaled that the fallout from the debate had turned into a full-blown crisis that sent those around him into a frenetic battle mode.
Former President Barack Obama came from the sidelines to offer words of encouragement. Mr. Biden made something of a mea culpa on the tree stump in North Carolina during a proof-of-life rally. And prominent surrogates, including those on many wish lists for replacements, made their case for Mr. Biden on cable news. Some of the most intense advocacy has taken place behind closed doors, at private fundraisers, and in a flurry of late-night and early-morning conversations.
On Saturday, their efforts appeared to have successfully stemmed the tide of prominent Democrats calling on Mr. Biden to step aside. The president, for his part, took to microphones at campaign events and told deep-pocketed supporters and donors that he knew he had ruined the debate. And he repeatedly tried to refocus attention on Donald J. Trump’s record.
“I didn’t have a great night,” Mr. Biden told a group of donors in East Hampton on Saturday. “But neither does he.”
©2024 The New York Times News Service
First print: Jul 01, 2024 | 00:57 IST