The media landscape has erupted in response to President Joe Biden’s dismal performance during the CNN Presidential Debate. Responses have ranged from harsh critiques to outright calls from the left for him to withdraw from the 2024 contest.
Due to Biden’s comments, there have been discussions on MSNBC about whether the presumed Democratic nominee should step aside, making way for an August convention to choose a new nominee. Nicolle Wallace highlighted the growing concern: “I was on the phones for some of it after that became clear and there is a conversation happening inside Biden’s circle, and certainly a much more frank conversation happening inside the Democratic coalition. And I think there will be stories of a lot of concern about the performance tonight.”
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Politico conveyed even more dire perspectives, quoting Democratic operatives. One operative stated, “Biden is toast.” Another adviser to major Democratic donors was even more blunt, saying, “Our only hope is that he bows out, we have a brokered convention, or dies. Otherwise we are f**king dead.”
“It’s not great all around,” a down-ballot Democrat for statewide office told Politico. “Our president has a speech impediment, a cold, and is 81.” A senior aide to top Democratic officials added, “No one expected a master class in debating from Joe Biden, but no one expected this nose dive. He was bad on message, bad on substance, bad on counter-punching, bad on presentation, bad on non-verbals. There was no bright spot in this debate for him. The only bright spot is that this happened in June and not October.”
CNN’s John King highlighted the “very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party” that started early in the debate. “This was a game-changing debate in the sense that right now, as we speak, there is a deep, a wide, and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party. It started minutes into the debate and it continues right now,” King said. “It involves party strategists, it involves elected officials, it involves fundraisers. And they’re having conversations about the president’s performance, which they think was dismal, which they think will hurt other people down the party in the ticket, and they’re having conversations about what they should do about it.”
King’s CNN colleague Kasie Hunt echoed these sentiments, writing on X, “The voice, open-mouthed look, and visual contrast between President Biden and former President Trump all have Democrats I’m talking to nearly beside themselves watching this debate.”
Bloomberg Opinion editor Tim O’Brien wrote on X: “Trump’s taken control of the momentum of this debate — despite lying and living in an alternate reality — and Biden simply comes across as a somewhat dazed punching bag.”
