President Biden's team clearly seems eager to put Thursday's debate debacle in the rearview mirror. They trotted Joe out to a fundraiser at another wealthy donor's mansion in New Jersey yesterday and invited him to address the supportive audience in a friendly environment. Rather than avoiding the subject of the gaffe-filled confrontation with Donald Trump and all of the liberal outlets now calling for Scranton Joe to step aside, Biden decided to tackle the subject directly. But he did so by making a very curious claim. He told the audience that contrary to the popular current narrative, he had actually been effective in achieving his goals. According to some unspecified "researchers," undecided voters were actually won over to his side by his debating skills. The event was held at the home of Democratic New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy and reportedly raised $3.7 million for the Biden campaign.
From the NY Post:
President Biden went to a posh fundraiser at a New Jersey mansion Saturday and reportedly claimed to the crowd that his gaffe-filled, disastrous debate against Donald Trump actually converted undecided voters to his camp.The 81-year-old Commander-in-Chief made the dubious declaration at a private event at the home of New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, which his wife announced had raised $3.7 million, NJ.com reported.While Biden admitted to the small crowd that his debate performance was lackluster — prompting several major newspapers to call on him to bow out of his reelection bid — he said voters interpreted the event differently.
Here is the direct quote from Biden's remarks. “Research during the debate shows us converting more undecided voters than Trump did."
Oh, really? Precisely where is this "research" and how can we access it to do some fact-checking? It's true that the major news networks typically have a select group of viewers hooked up to monitor their responses to such events in real-time, but those tend to be vanishingly small samples. It's difficult to imagine any truly undecided voters gaining more confidence in Biden's cognitive abilities while watching that debacle unless the only thing they were unable to decide going into it was whether to vote "no" or "hell no" for Donald Trump. I'm not suggesting that such voters don't exist, but they clearly prioritize their burning hatred for the Bad Orange Man over the future security of the nation.
Biden's claims also run contrary to the first national polling to emerge after the dust settled from the debate. A significant majority said that Trump came away victorious by a 49-17 percent margin. That included a majority of Democrats. It would be unusual indeed for undecided independent voters to have been more enthusiastic than Biden's own base. (Just as an interesting side note, 45% of respondents in that survey said that neither candidate performed well.) During the event, someone hired a stunt plane to fly over the area trailing a banner reading, “BI-DONE!”
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a front-page editorial Saturday asking Biden to pass the torch to another, more competent candidate, following the lead of The New York Times.
“The unfortunate truth is that Biden should withdraw from the race, for the good of the nation he has served so admirably for half a century,” the AJC Editorial Board wrote.
Unfortunately for all of these onlookers, swapping out Joe Biden isn't as easy as they're trying to make it sound. It's true that Biden can technically release his delegates at the convention, but if he doesn't do so willingly, there are few other options and the clock is ticking. At least sixteen states specifically forbid political parties from substituting a new candidate in place of the person selected by the primary voters. Others impose strict deadlines to even make the attempt and some of those deadlines have already passed. Democrats have yet to answer the question of what to do about Kamala Harris if Biden is put to the side. She's even less popular than Joe Biden if you can imagine such a thing. But there will be a furious uproar among their own base if the party elders dare to skip over a Black woman in favor of some white dude from California. (That being Gavin Newsom.) This is looking increasingly like a "devil and the deep blue sea" scenario for the Democrats and Donald Trump's campaign team must be feeling increasingly confident.
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