Amid calls for President Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race after Thursday’s debate, neither the candidate nor the campaign appear ready to heed them.
On Friday, one such call came from The New York Times editorial board, which urged Biden to drop out.
Biden’s campaign actually spun that as a good thing.
“The last time Joe Biden lost the New York Times editorial board’s endorsement, it turned out pretty well for him,” campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond said, according to NBC, referring to the Times’s support for other candidates during the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries.
CNN White House correspondent Kayla Tausche reported that, not only will Biden ignore the Times advice and remain in the race, he’s also “committed” to a second debate:
NEW, as just reported on @CNN: Not only does @POTUS not plan to drop out, Biden remains committed to a second debate in September, an adviser tells me
— Kayla Tausche (@kaylatausche) June 28, 2024
During a North Carolina appearance, Biden said one bad night was not the end of the world, according to CNN.
“I know I’m not a young man. I don’t walk as easily as I used to. I don’t talk as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to, but i know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. And I know how to do this job, I know how to get things done. And I know what millions of Americans know: When you get knocked down, you get back up,” he said.
Should Biden step down?
Biden campaign representative Seth Schuster, when asked if Biden would leave the race, flatly stated, “No.”
But as Biden vowed to persist, Julián Castro, a former HUD Secretary in the Obama administration, said Biden made his task harder with his performance.
“Biden had probably the lowest bar to clear of any presidential nominee coming into a — this time summer, usually it’s a fall debate — and he failed to clear that bar. That was obvious,” Castro said Friday
“After last night, it became less likely that he will win. Now it’s up to him to rebuild that competence to make it more likely,” he added.
In an Op-Ed in The New York Times, columnist Ross Douthat said that Biden dropping out is “essential if you want to protect the country from a second Biden term — from the ways that his obvious deterioration endangers the country that he nominally leads.”
“The entire global order will be endangered if there is an empty vessel in the Oval Office, a headless superpower in a destabilizing world,” he wrote.
Are We SURE We Want Biden To Drop Out?… pic.twitter.com/dS0qV1IIx4
— (@Emilio2763) June 29, 2024
Douthat wrote that “replacing him with another Democratic candidate, however difficult it seems, would spare America from the significant dangers of a Biden victory.”
Former President Donald Trump poked at Biden during a Virginia rally, saying, “Joe Biden’s age is not his problem. It’s his competence,” according to CBS.
“The question every voter should be asking themselves today is not whether Joe Biden can survive a 90-minute debate performance, but whether America can survive four more years of crooked Joe Biden in the White House,” he said, according to Fox News.
“Remember, the biggest problem for our country is not Joe Biden’s personal decline,” Trump further jabbed. “It’s that Joe Biden’s policies are causing America’s decline at a level that we’ve never seen before.
