Joe Biden is facing pressure to stand down as the Democratic choice for November’s election after a “historically bad” debate performance against Donald Trump in which the elderly president repeatedly lost his train of thought.
The 81-year-old Mr Biden’s forgetfulness and verbal stumbles during Thursday night’s debate — one of two scheduled before the election — left Mr Trump, 78, looking forceful in comparison.
The Republican was able to glide over his unenviable status as the first White House candidate to have a criminal conviction. He relied on falsehood and distortion about his time in office, including a renewed defence of the mob of his supporters who stormed Congress after the last election.
The president’s voice was hoarse and often tailed off as he struggled to remember facts and figures during the 90-minute debate on CNN, doing nothing to assure critics and Democrats who worry about the cognitive abilities of the oldest president on record.
Mr Biden was later said by his camp to have a cold and his running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris, did her best to paper over the cracks. “Yes, there was a slow start but there was a strong finish,” she said.
But Maria Shriver, a former first lady of California and niece of John F Kennedy, tweeted that while she “loved” Mr Biden, the debate was “heartbreaking in many ways”. She added: “This is a big political moment. There’s panic in the Democratic party.”
David Axelrod, who masterminded Barack Obama’s win in 2008 when Mr Biden ran as vice president, was equally blunt.
“There is a sense of shock at how he came out at the beginning of this debate. How his voice sounded. He seemed a little disoriented,” he said. “There are going to be discussions about whether he should continue.”
Julián Castro, who served in the Obama cabinet, said: “Biden had a very low bar going into the debate and failed to clear even that bar.”
There are only weeks to go before the Democrats hold their nominating convention in mid-August, when Mr Biden is due to be acclaimed as the party’s standard-bearer for a rematch with Mr Trump.
The president told supporters after the debate “Let’s keep going”, and said: “See you at the next one.” The second debate takes place in September.
But Democratic elders were being urged to pore over the party rule book to see what could be done to find a replacement before then.
However, of the obvious potential names, Ms Harris herself is deeply unpopular. Another possible contender, California Governor Gavin Newsom, insisted to reporters that the Democats “could not be more wholly unified behind Biden”.
But Lord Darroch, who was Britain’s ambassador to Washington and a former National Security Adviser, told BBC radio that Mr Biden “should stand aside”.
The former envoy, who lost his job after a row with then President Trump, said: “This was a historically bad performance. He was inaudible, incoherent, he lost his train of thought several times, some of his answers made simply no sense.”
Education Secretary Gillian Keegan said on LBC: “We would work with any US president because it is always for the American public to choose their president.”
Mr Biden did score some hits over his opponent, in particular when the debate turned to Mr Trump’s criminal record after he was convicted a month ago of falsifying business records to conceal payments before the 2016 election to adult film star Stormy Daniels.
“I didn’t have sex with a porn star,” Mr Trump was forced to exclaim, after Mr Biden accused him of cheating on wife Melania when she was pregnant. The president said: “You have the morals of an alley cat.”
When Trump tried to accuse his opponent of criminal wrongdoing, warning darkly of a potential prosecution if he wins in November, Mr Biden shot back: “The only person on this stage who is a convicted felon is the man I’m looking at right now.”
The president, whose late son Beau served in Iraq, had another high point when he went on the attack against Mr Trump’s reported comments in 2018 that he declined to visit a military cemetery in France because US veterans buried there were “suckers” and “losers”. The former president denied making the remark.
But there were more low points than high for Mr Biden. He fluffed opportunities to hammer Mr Trump over abortion after the Supreme Court, stacked with conservative judges appointed by the Republican, threw out the historic Roe v Wade ruling that had long protected a woman’s constitutional right to privacy over her body.
That is one issue that is mobilising voters on the Left. But on the Right, unfettered immigration both legal and illegal is galvanising the Trump base, and he went hard after Mr Biden over the issue.
There was also a bizarre exchange over which of the two was better at golf.
Mr Trump’s own best moment came after what is likely to be the debate’s defining moment, when the president appeared flummoxed during a meandering answer about his economic record, Covid and Medicare for the elderly.
“We finally beat Medicare,” Mr Biden said, possibly meaning Covid. Mr Trump retorted: “He’s right. He did beat Medicare. He beat it to death.”
CNN’s snap poll scored a clear win for Trump, by 67 per cent to 33 per cent.
