It’s been just over a week now since Joe Biden’s debate stage meltdown—and he has yet to quell concerns about the viability of his candidacy. Post-debate polling paints a grim picture for November, suggesting the president is falling further behind Donald Trump, an anti-democratic demagogue who would seek to implement a dangerous nationalist agenda if elected. Efforts by Biden and his aides to restore confidence have seemed uneven and, in some cases, counterproductive. Meanwhile, a growing rank of Democratic lawmakers and donors are pressing for him to make way for a successor. And it’s not just “Davos Dems” or a “hyperventilating” media; the anxiety is coming from voters who want to avoid the horror of a second Trump term.
“I’m not asking for much” out of a Democratic candidate, as one Wisconsin voter told the Washington Post. “Just, like, knows how to address a camera…Can shake hands.”
With his candidacy—and with it, potentially, the future of democracy—on the ropes, Biden is hoping a prime-time interview with George Stephanopoulos airing Friday evening can help reassure nervous Democrats that he is still their best option to defeat Trump. But it is far from clear that the pre-recorded ABC News interview will be enough to quiet the noise around his struggling campaign, as he faces calls to drop out.
Biden, to this point, has been publicly resolute about remaining in the race, suggesting—like members of his inner circle—that he merely “had a bad debate.” “90 minutes on stage,” he said in a Philadelphia radio interview Thursday, “does not erase what I’ve done for three and a half years.”
That’s true, but the progress he helped usher in over those three and a half years would be erased and reversed if he can’t beat Trump this fall, and he hasn’t done much in the past week to re-establish trust in his ability to do that: His verbal stumbles have continued, amplified by the added attention since the debate; his outreach to worried Democratic governors reportedly included a promise to get more sleep and to cut back his events after 8 p.m., a hardly-reassuring acknowledgment of his limitations; and morale has remained low among staff. “Everyone is miserable,” as one White House official told Axios. “The only thing that can really allay concerns is for the president to demonstrate that he’s capable of running this campaign,” a high-ranking Democratic National Committee official added. “Everything else feels like ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’ by his inner circle to prop him up.”
Biden, whose struggling primary campaign rebounded not long after a sit-down with Stephanopoulos in early 2020, is hoping to demonstrate his command in his high-stakes ABC News interview Friday. The New York Times reports that Friday’s interview “is likely to last between 15 and 25 minutes,” though could be extended. Still, a single TV interview, more than a week since the debate meltdown, is unlikely, on its own, to settle concerns about his vigor, and the central issue—his age—will remain either way. “I just love Biden, but he’s frail,” as one Democratic voter put it to the New York Times. “Pass the baton.”