Since the viability of his candidacy is in query, Joe Bidensat down with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Friday for one of the crucial essential interviews of the Democratic president’s decades-long political profession.
The 22-minute meeting took place a full eight days after Biden’s catastrophic debate performancewhere greater than 50 million people watched the 81-year-old struggle to complete sentences or answer easy questions on his campaign. Of course, far fewer people watched the ABC interview, but within the audience were most of the elected officials, donors and political strategists who’re actively deciding whether to avoid wasting or end Biden’s candidacy in the approaching days. Top Biden advisers have urged elected Democrats to not make their concerns public.
The president and his team hoped that this primary interview would help mobilize his party and construct momentum for the long road ahead. Whether he succeeded is unclear.
Here are some key takeaways:
Biden’s hurdle after the talk was low
At this point, every Biden answer, every interview, every speech serves as a type of Rorschach test for voters, who keep telling pollsters they’re concerned about his age. And if people were on the lookout for other signs of trouble, they were easy to seek out.
Biden performed higher than he did on the talk stage. There were also moments of strength because the president touted his record, vowed to not drop out of the race and rejected attacks against Donald Trumpwhom he repeatedly called a “pathological liar.” Biden also called Trump a “congenital liar” at one point.
But he needed to do greater than exceed the impossibly low bar he set on national television last week. And the ABC interview was stuffed with awkward pauses, garbled words and moments when he digressed.
In certainly one of the primary answers of the interview, Biden struggled to obviously explain whether he was aware of his poor performance in the course of the debate because it unfolded in real time, jumping from his preparation to polls to Trump’s lies in the course of the debate to blaming nobody.
Trump’s allies seized on one other response from Biden that suggested he was unsure whether he had rewatched his debate performance. “I don’t think so,” Biden said.
He said only “the Almighty” could dissuade him from running
When asked repeatedly whether he would resign, Biden gave no indication that he might give in to pressure inside his party and drop out of the presidential campaign.
He refused to even consider the likelihood. In fact, he made just one exception: “If the Lord Almighty comes down and tells me to do it, then perhaps I will do it.”
And this despite Stephanopoulos presenting him with various data and describing “the prevailing mood” from his discussions with party officials. “They are worried about you and the country. And they don’t believe you can win. They want you to leave with dignity,” said the journalist.
Biden fought back.
“The vast majority are not where these people are,” he said. “Have you ever known a time when elected officials running for office weren’t a little bit concerned?”
He took the blame – and rejected questions on his health
The bottom line is that Biden has no good explanation for his disappointing performance in the talk.
In the interview, he spoke of a “bad episode” but said there have been no signs of a “more serious illness.” Instead, he said he simply had “a really bad cold.” When questioned again, he said, “I just had a bad night.”
He also blamed nobody but himself, although rumors have emerged in recent days about his staff and people coordinating his preparations.
Such a solution is unlikely to persuade those that are deeply concerned about his physical and mental fitness. He also refused to undergo medical tests that might have allayed those concerns.
Specifically, Stephanopoulos asked if Biden would consent to an “independent medical examination that includes neurological and cognitive testing.” He asked greater than once when Biden didn’t answer directly.
“Look, I take a cognitive test every day. Every day I take this test,” Biden said. “In everything I do. I’m not just campaigning, I’m running the world.”
It was not a straightforward interview
If Biden’s advisers selected Stephanopoulos for the president’s first major interview after the talk within the hope that he would go easy on them, they were incorrect.
Stephanopoulos, who served as an adviser to former President Bill Clinton many years ago, bombarded the Democratic president with tough questions and blunt truths, albeit in a mild tone.
When Biden said he had been drawing large crowds recently, Stephanopoulos replied, “I don’t think you want to play the crowd game. Donald Trump can draw large crowds.”
Biden seemed nervous at times.
The president paused again when Stephanopoulos asked if he knew “how bad things were going during the debate.” He later paused again when Stephanopoulos asked if he was behaving like Trump by “putting his personal interests above the national interest” by staying within the race.
In one other conversation, Biden asked Stephanopoulos if the polls were as accurate as they was.
It was meant as a rhetorical query. But the interviewer answered quickly.
“I don’t think so, but if you look at all the current polling data, he’s definitely ahead in the majority vote, and probably even further ahead in the swing states,” Stephanopoulos said of Trump. “And another important factor is that the Democrats running for the Senate and the House are doing better than you in many swing states.”
Biden didn’t ask many more rhetorical questions.
An interview is not going to repair the damage
Even before the interview ended, it was clear that it will take rather more to win over a celebration that’s suddenly open to Biden alternatives 4 months before Election Day.
At in regards to the same time, ABC released the primary interview excerpt. Democrat Mike Quigley of Illinois was the fourth Democratic member of Congress to call on Biden to drop out of the race.
“To avoid a complete catastrophe,” Quigley said on MSNBC, “step back and let someone else do the job.”
The White House and the president’s campaign are encouraging Democrats to not make public their concerns about Biden’s prospects for achievement and electability, in accordance with a Democrat who was granted anonymity to debate the matter.
Another Democrat who watched the election said he thought Biden was shaky and predicted more people would call for him to drop out of the race.
Biden, for his part, wouldn’t entertain the likelihood that congressional leaders might confront him in the approaching days and ask him to resign. But as Stephanopoulos has repeatedly said, that’s indeed a really real possibility. Earlier this week, Senator Mark Warner of Virginia reached out to his fellow senators to debate whether to ask Biden to drop out of the race.
Biden said Warner was “a good man,” but mentioned that the Virginia man had previously considered running for president.
When asked how he would feel next January if he ultimately lost the election, Biden’s answer probably doesn’t encourage confidence.
“As long as I did my best and did my job as well as I can, that’s what it’s about,” he said.
