12 Specialists Advise on Biden's Next Steps Following His Debate Misstep

On Thursday, President Joe Biden’s debate performance sent Democrats straight into crisis mode: Nothing about his demeanor, from his shaky voice, to his pallid skin, to his meandering answers and head-scratching non sequiturs, served to reassure voters worried that his age meant he wasn’t up for another four years on the job.

On Friday, at a rally in Raleigh, there was a dramatically different Biden on display, energetic and forceful, as he tried to quell the tsunami of panic emanating from his party compatriots — many of whom are wondering if he needs to step down.

Now, Democrats are gaming out whether Biden should withdraw from the race — or if there’s a way he can get back on track and still beat former President Donald Trump.

With that in mind, we reached out to a group of top political thinkers: After Biden's debate performance, what advice would you give to the president, his inner circle or the Democratic Party about what to do next?

‘I refuse to join the Democratic vultures panicking about Joe Biden.’BY JOHN FETTERMAN

John Fetterman is a senator from Pennsylvania.

No one knows better than me that a rough debate is not the sum total of a person and their record. The day after my debate in 2022, there was a thermonuclear beatdown. Polling geniuses predicted that the race was over, and I was done. But two weeks later, I won my race by 5 points. Why? Because Pennsylvanians understood the stakes of the election and they knew who I was and what I stood for long before I stepped onto the debate stage. Looking back, the CNN punditry and Democratic panic after my debate was not dissimilar to what we’ve seen in the 24 hours following Thursday’s debate. And just like Pennsylvanians knew me, the American people know Joe Biden and his character — and they know Trump and his.

Joe Biden does not need advice. He needs to stay the course. Just take a look at how he bounced back at his rally the next day in North Carolina. The bottom line is that Joe Biden is a tough motherfucker — and the only person in the world to ever beat Trump in an election.

I refuse to join the Democratic vultures panicking about Joe Biden. I’m proud to stand by the president. We need to have his back. The stakes are too high not to.

‘Move on. Now.’BY CHARLES SYKES

Charles Sykes is author of How the Right Lost Its Mind.

Move on. Now. And quickly.

It won’t be easy, and it is not without risk, but the Biden White House needs an intervention, because this can’t go on. Thursday’s debate wasn’t simply a “bad night,” or a gaffe. It was a disaster, and there is no way to spin it away.

It confirmed all the fears about Biden’s fitness not just for the presidential campaign, but about his ability to serve another four years; and none of those concerns are going away.

But the real crisis is not Joe Biden’s age or infirmity, but what they mean for the future of American democracy. The prime directive of 2024 isn’t the reelection of Joe Biden; it is preventing Trump’s return to power and the parade of horribles that he will bring in his wake.

For Democrats, then, Thursday’s debate should have been a moment of startling clarity: If the party does not make a change, Trump will win this election. If they really believe that Trump represents an existential threat to our constitutional order, they need to act like it now.

Joe Biden needs to recognize that as well. He deserves an honorable retirement. The country deserves a better choice.

‘Project confidence, not panic’BY JULIA AZARI

Julia Azari is a professor of political science at Marquette University.

We don’t really know whether Thursday night’s debate performance was a blip, or whether it was indicative of deeper problems with President Biden’s age and health. He had a significant stumble at the beginning in which he started on an answer about abortion and wandered into talking about immigration. As the debate went on, his answers were straightforward, but his delivery was still raspy and flat. Replacing a sitting president over a bad debate performance is a drastic step. If it turns out there’s a larger problem, then that becomes a much more serious discussion.

If that discussion goes forward, there are two critical things for the Democratic Party to keep in mind. First, project confidence, not panic. The whole point of a political party is that it doesn’t rest on a single person. The message should be: the Biden administration, like all administrations, has been a collective endeavor, and the party has cultivated many talented and qualified individuals in and outside Washington.

Second, don’t forget the coalition dynamics that landed the party on Biden in 2020. One of Biden’s major advantages was that he drew support from different contingents within the party. Perhaps most important were African American leaders and voters, a crucial group for Democrats. Establishment moderates and liberals also found Biden an acceptable nominee — he’d spent his career in Congress locating the middle ground of the party.

Discussions about who might replace Biden on the ticket should come from a place of attention to the groups that make up the party, not a laundry list of candidate qualities, or unfounded assumptions about geographic appeal. Any candidate should be popular with key demographics and constituencies, and be prepared to navigate the significant divisions between progressives and establishment Democrats. The costs and benefits of any potential candidates must be considered through the lens of the party coalition.

‘The Democratic Party needs to chill the F out.’BY MICHAEL STEELE

Michael Steele is a former chair of the Republican National Committee. 

My advice for Joe Biden: First, recognize that you hit a wall. But he also needs to recognize, okay, you’re 81, but you're still the president. You still have the opportunity to move the country forward.

Second, sit down and look at that debate and absorb everything you see in that debate, not just coming from you, but also coming from Donald Trump.

Three, don’t panic. Because now is the chance to lean into your humanity and embrace the fact that, yeah, you’re 81. So what? You have to contextualize things. Everyone seems to be worried about your age. But what about the character of the man you’re running against? Show the fire you have in your spirit to do the rest of the job. You’re not going to get younger, but you can get better and that’s what he needs to do.

The Democratic Party needs to chill the F out. From the very beginning they have been Worry Warts and Nervous Nellies about Joe Biden. If they were so concerned about the 81-year-old man sitting in the office, then someone should have come to him two years ago and said, “Sir, stand down.”

Redirect the energy of the party in a way to fix this by first owning it. You’re nominating an 81-year-old man; Republicans are nominating a sociopathic convicted felon. One, make the case. Two, stop all the damn hand wringing about replacing Joe Biden. Three, let Joe Biden be Joe Biden. Stop weighing him down with a bunch of data he can’t recall; stop weighing him down with useless process in a campaign against a sexual predator.

Biden needs to remind the American people there’s a reason why they fired Trump in 2020 and hired him. That’s what the Democratic party needs to get its head around and stop undermining their candidate and their ability to make a case against Trump on behalf of the country, take the House and remain competitive in the Senate.

‘Rally around him no matter what.’BY DOUGLAS WILSON

Douglas Wilson is a Democratic strategist based in Charlotte, North Carolina. He is the founder and principal of Alexander Wilson Consulting LLC and Astoria Strategies LLC. 

One: I believe the party and Biden's inner circle should first take a breath. Two, the campaign should get Biden out more and let Biden be Biden and not button up. The more he gets out, the more he will get used to being back on the campaign trail. They should have him visit high-turnout precincts/areas in key battleground states. Three: Rally around him no matter what.

Back in 2016, the RNC freaked out after the Access Hollywood Tape and wanted to replace Trump. Trump's supporters rallied around him, and he won. If Democrats weaken the incumbent president because he had a bad night, then they will be to blame for the imperiling of the American government and democracy.

‘Biden needs to accept reality and withdraw from a race he cannot win’BY MONA CHAREN

Mona Charen is a syndicated columnist and policy editor at The Bulwark where she hosts the “Beg to Differ” podcast.

This is an “emergency break glass” moment. Joe Biden needed simply to reassure a skittish public that he was up to the responsibilities of the presidency. Instead, he lived down to the most uncharitable descriptions circulated by Republicans — doddering, slack-jawed, confused, and feeble. He could not do the basic repartee that is required of any candidate for any office, far less manage the jujitsu that dealing with a shameful liar and demagogue demands. He could neither make the case for himself, nor prosecute the case against a criminal, a fool, and a would-be autocrat.

Now that the curtain has been pulled back, there is nothing Biden can do to resuscitate his campaign. He was revealed as incapable. Friendly interviews will not solve it, nor will rallies featuring Democrats with plaster smiles. Voters were dubious about him before the debate. They will be downright implacable after.

For the sake of the country, Biden needs to accept reality and withdraw from a race he cannot win. At this late date, it’s uncertain that any Democrat chosen by the delegates would have time to win enough support from undecided voters to keep Trump from the White House. But there is a chance, which is more than Biden has.

If Biden withdraws, he will enjoy a rush of affection and gratitude from the Democratic Party. If he then endorses someone, say Gretchen Whitmer or Josh Shapiro, who are both popular governors of swing states, he might be able to fill their sails with enough wind to get momentum.

The anti-Trump coalition is out there. In 2020, Biden was its avatar. We learned on June 27 that he cannot play that role in 2024, and it is urgent to find someone who can.

‘Biden needs to acknowledge the effects of aging that everyone can plainly see’BY BILL SCHER

Bill Scher is a contributing writer to POLITICO Magazine and the politics editor for the Washington Monthly.

In March, Joe Biden eased anxieties about his advanced age with an energetic and agile State of the Union address, but unleashed anxieties anew with a sluggish and disjointed debate. Going forward, Biden has little room for further error. Any candidate can recover from a bad debate — see Ronald Reagan in 1984, Barack Obama in 2012 or John Fetterman in 2022 — but only with subsequent reassuring performances.

If Biden is going to stay in the race, he will need to participate in more unscripted events that showcase his mental acuity and comprehension of complex issues. Typically, a presidential campaign would avoid events where the candidate's message can't be easily controlled — and Biden has always been particularly prone to stepping on his own messages. But this campaign is not going to be won on mere message discipline.

And Biden needs to acknowledge the effects of aging that everyone can plainly see. Increased stammering and stiff walking are not signs of incompetence, let alone dementia. But if unacknowledged by Biden, voters are left wondering what exactly is happening, and if Biden is trying to suppress what really is happening. Candor and transparency about the aging process would go a long way to defusing the casual ageism that is holding back Biden's reelection effort.

‘Follow the evidence.’BY ANDRA GILLESPIE

Andra Gillespie is an associate professor of political science at Emory University.

There is no way to ignore President Biden’s disastrous performance in Thursday’s debate. As such, Democrats are grappling with the reality of the perception that was created or reinforced about Biden’s fitness for the job. Despite the fact that perception is reality though, any next steps that Biden and the Democratic Party make should be informed by multiple forms of data: data on the president’s health; data on how likely voters are internalizing what they saw in or heard about the debate; and data on the best forms of voter outreach.

Since Biden’s performance only reinforced the rumors that he is in a state of cognitive decline, I would recommend that he submit to a public examination of his health. Disclosing the results of his next physical (which should happen now, regardless of his usual schedule), including a cognitive examination, should be considered of the utmost importance. And Biden has to be realistic about the results. If the physical indicates a serious diagnosis that would compromise his ability to serve, he should stand down.

Assuming Biden is healthy, the concurrent step is to assess the health of his campaign. Democratic elites were clearly alarmed by Biden’s performance, but we will need more than “person on the street” interviews and flash polls to gain a real sense of how the performance affected his standing among likely voters in this election — and if an alternate nominee would fare better against Donald Trump. When the results are released, Biden and his team must look at the results soberly. If the numbers suggest that Biden’s standing is imploding and that another candidate has a real chance of beating Donald Trump, then he should follow the data and put his party’s interests first.

Regardless of whether Biden remains the nominee though, the Democrats have to remember fundamentals. Part of this is crafting an effective message that contrasts their message with the flaws of the message Donald Trump presented on Thursday — he lied, evaded important, kitchen table policy questions that many Americans care about, and doubled down on his insistence that he did nothing wrong on January 6. Beyond the substance, this race has always been about who has the better ground game. That remains true today. Admittedly, there may be more discouraged Democratic voters this week than last week, but Democrats guarantee themselves a loss if they forget to focus on the time-honored, empirically tested, personal outreach strategies that boost voter turnout.

‘Build a time-machine’BY JEFF GREENFIELD

Jeff Greenfield is a contributing writer at POLITICO Magazine and a five-time Emmy-winning network television analyst and author.

My 4-Step Plan for Democrats:

1. Build a time-machine.

2. Go back to 2015; convince President Barack Obama that Hillary Clinton is a deeply flawed candidate; have him back Vice President Joe Biden instead.

3. Biden, with running mate Sen. Amy Klobucher, defeats Donald Trump in a landslide in 2016. The GOP moves to erase all traces of Trump.

4. Midway through Biden’s second term, after he has appointed three Supreme Court justices (thus ensuring a liberal majority for decades), he resigns. Klobucher assumes the presidency; this November, either she or a (more or less) mainstream Republican will win the White House.

If you think this idea is far-fetched, compare it with any of the other offerings here.

‘Biden should bless a new nominee.’BY JOHN MARK HANSEN

John Mark Hansen is the Charles L. Hutchinson Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago.

President Joe Biden’s poor performance in the debate has created an opportunity for the Democrats that was not available before. A new nominee, offered now, can unite the party and give voters a choice between a fresh candidate unencumbered by the past and a candidate so flawed in character and so steeped in grievances that the electorate has rejected him twice already.

Biden should bless a new nominee, direct his delegates to support her or him in Chicago, and divert his considerable resources to the candidate’s aid. It is the best way to secure his legacy as the statesman who vanquished the greatest threat to the American republic since secession and civil war.

Second, the party should give the choice of his successor as nominee to Biden, not open it up for a free-for-all on the convention floor. If the party announces a new candidate in a few weeks, the nominee will enjoy a run of excited curiosity and positive coverage through July and into August, pushing Trump out of the limelight. If the party waits until Chicago, it not only forfeits the “honeymoon” but also risks the crossfire of criticism that the hopefuls will inevitably turn on each other.

Finally, Democrats must accept the choice the president makes and unite around the new nominee — and, I predict, they will, because the situation is dire, the time short and the consequence of failure unimaginable. Thursday was a dark day for Biden and his party but, as the saying has it, “the night is always darkest before the dawn.” Because of this adversity, the Democrats can reconfigure the race and improve their prospects for victory in November.

‘Bottom line, Biden has to make a bold adjustment quickly.’BY JARVIS STEWART

Jarvis Stewart is a managing partner at Cover Communications and a Democratic media strategist.

Like so many supporters of President Biden’s, I winced at his poor performance at last night’s debate. No one believed he would go toe-to-toe with the rapid fire, seldom truthful and fear-based rhetoric of former President Donald Trump. But the never-ending rambling and failure to counter punch, even on softball topics from the moderators, left many staunch Democrats and undecided voters scratching their heads.

To say the president’s campaign is at a crossroad is an understatement. For the next several days, if not weeks, the Biden campaign should expect to be in crisis and rapid response mode. While no surrogate can help with Biden’s low-energy style, elevating the successes of his term will be key. The bipartisan legislative success of the Biden White House is indisputable. Tighten the message on the economy, immigration, the US support for Ukraine and our stance in Gaza.

Arguing the facts however will not be enough to “wag the dog.” President Biden’s performance in the debate begs the question if he should step aside. With the help of Biden’s family, closest advisers, donors and of course former Presidents Obama and Clinton, this option must be entertained.

The ideal Democratic replacement, timing and messaging will be key. One candidate that should be seriously considered is Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. A Whitmer/Harris ticket would be appealing to the Democratic base and independents. As for timing, a decision by Biden must happen before the DNC convention in Chicago — otherwise there will be more intraparty chaos.

Bottom line, Biden has to make a bold adjustment quickly. The images and pundit commentary will haunt his campaign well into the fall if nothing is done.

‘They'd better hope Biden can shake off the debate doldrums.’BY LIAM DONOVAN

Liam Donovan is a principal at Bracewell LLP and a former National Republican Senatorial Committee aide.

After years of hand-waving concerns of age-related decline, Democrats are waking up to the peril of running an octogenarian candidate. Everyone who watched the presidential debate knows what they saw, and no amount of spin can elide it. The question now facing Democrats is whether they can or should do anything about it. And less than 130 days out from the election, there are no simple answers. No number of grave op-eds or perplexed cable news monologues can change the fact that this decision is Biden's alone. There is no cabal of insiders capable of engineering a late swap — notwithstanding GOP fears to the contrary — and given the president's complex history with various party poobahs, an attempted intervention stands to dig him in further. The only counsel he's apt to heed is that of the close-knit Biden clan, with First Lady Jill and sister Valerie first among equals.

But whatever the odds of persuading Team Biden, would Democrats be better off rolling the dice with someone else? Without a consensus alternative, let alone a strategy to nominate them, the trade is dubious at best. The risk for panicky Dems is trading one self-delusion for another in the form of some imagined dream ticket.

The default candidate would be Vice President Kamala Harris, an understanding that has served as the very subtext for Democrats' passive-aggressive approach to the age question over the past four years, marked by periodic bouts of pining for a swing state savior. Dems must take a deep breath and ask themselves whether they think Harris has a better chance against Trump; if not, they'd better hope Biden can shake off the debate doldrums, prosecute the case against Trump, and close out the campaign with more good days than bad.

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