Analysis | Can Biden recover from his damaging debate performance? (2024)

Biden has time to recover. This debate was the earliest in history, and the election is more than four months away, normally an eternity in politics. Turnarounds can happen. Time is not the issue. But this is not a matter of simply changing campaign tactics or producing clever new ads. His advisers can help; they can offer ideas. But this mostly falls on Biden’s shoulders.

Is he up to the task? Can he persuade enough voters to forget what they witnessed Thursday night and look at him in a new light and reassess whether he has the physical and mental stamina to serve another four years? Does he have the capacity to overcome the damage he did to his candidacy — and the impact it had on Democrats, alarmed at the prospect of former president Donald Trump returning to the White House? Can he make Trump as much the issue as himself?

It’s not as though Trump had a stellar evening. Far from it. He sought to tell voters that things were better when he was president, but in his own performance, he was the same Trump who was turned out of office in 2020, the same Trump the country has seen for nearly nine years, perhaps even an exaggerated version.

The former president lied his way through the evening, spewing statement after statement that had little or no basis in fact — one wild claim after another. He blustered his way through pointed questions about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. He declined again to say that he would accept the results of the election if he loses.

It might not matter, thanks to the damage Biden did to himself. The president won many of the substantive exchanges. His performance grew steadier as the debate progressed. But first impressions matter, and for Biden they were worse than many Democrats had feared. And though he improved, there were enough stumbles, pauses, mixed-up words and blank stares throughout the debate that those first impressions could stick.

That the two men dislike one another is well known, but their exchanges became increasingly nasty and personal as the debate progressed. For many watching Thursday, the 90-minute debate was a reminder of why so many people are so dissatisfied with the choice they are being given. But unless something changes, this is the choice.

The alarm in Democratic circles was evident minutes after the opening of the debate. Panicked text messages followed, ricocheting around and around. Some Democrats wanted to turn away, it was so painful to watch. The same questions that had been asked for months but had faded into the background popped up again with new urgency: Will Biden step aside before the convention? Will some Democrats go to him to urge him to quit the race? If so, who? Can he be replaced at the convention in August? Who would be a better candidate?

None of that is assured. Biden is proud and he is stubborn. And he believes he is best-equipped to defeat Trump, as the only person to have done so before. To some Democrats, his decision to seek a second term, after saying in 2020 that he would be a bridge to a new generation, was selfish, putting his own interests ahead of the needs of his party — and, as many of them see it in the face of Trump’s challenge, jeopardizing the future of the republic.

But this leaves the Democrats in a precarious position. Without a turnaround, Thursday’s debate could make Biden’s chances of winning an electoral college majority more difficult. He was already in a challenging position. Extended talk of replacing him will further diminish him. An open convention is an invitation to more chaos inside the party. As one Democrat put it after the debate, “Biden is going to have to move aggressively in the next 24 hours to stem the panic.”

Before the debate, Trump held a narrow advantage in the election. National polls showed a nearly dead-even contest, in contrast to four years ago, when Biden held a steady lead throughout the campaign. Trump’s position looked even stronger in the battleground states that will decide who wins in the electoral college. His advantages in several cases are well within the margin of error, but they point to the very narrow pathway that Biden must follow to win.

Democratic and Republican strategists will eagerly await the first round of post-debate polls to see what movement there might be. Historically, debates can prompt some change in the balance between the candidates, but the changes are generally not long-lasting. A falloff for Biden will only intensify concerns among many Democrats about him as their nominee.

After the debate, Vice President Harris tried to mitigate the damage with interviews on cable networks. She stressed the contrasting agendas of the two candidates and highlighted the threats she said Trump poses to the country. She recounted the administration’s record, as Biden had tried to do in the debate. She focused on abortion rights, which is the most potent electoral issue Democrats have had for the past two years.

Harris can lessen the fallout. She can try to reassure panicky Democrats to step back and see the bigger picture. She can remind voters about the stakes involved in November and what Trump represents. But she cannot rescue Biden. Only he can save himself.

Inside the campaign, there is realism about what happened and hope that the president can reset the election as a choice, not a referendum. In this view, Biden’s positions on many issues are more popular than Trump’s — he won the debate on substance — and many voters still recoil at the prospect of a second Trump term, regardless of how they judged the president’s debate performance. In the cruel world of presidential campaigns, however, substance may not overtake style and perceptions of fitness.

One fear among Democrats is that voters disillusioned with the choice will simply stay home — or cast a ballot for a third-party candidate. That could hurt Biden more than Trump. Even before the debate, there was some evidence that voters who might naturally support a Democratic nominee were lukewarm toward the president and looking for an exit ramp. Biden cannot afford to let that grow.

David Plouffe, who was Barack Obama’s campaign manager in 2008 and went on to be a senior adviser in the White House, called the debate “the most important 90 minutes of the campaign and therefore a significant missed opportunity” for Biden.

That was putting it politely. Speaking on MSNBC, Plouffe also offered two scenarios for the campaign and the party: One is for Biden to step down, which he said he did not think would happen. The second was that Biden somehow is able “to right the ship.”

He offered another observation about the two candidates as they appeared at the debate. “They are three years apart,” he said. “They seemed 30 years apart tonight.”

The president’s age has been his most significant liability throughout the campaign. Though Trump is 78 and Biden 81, polls show that many Americans see Biden as too old and not sharp enough mentally to serve another four years, and they do not see Trump the same way. Democrats who like and admire Biden share those concerns about his fitness, though most will support him in November as the alternative to Trump.

Obama had a bad first debate in 2012, but he didn’t realize it when he came off the stage. His advisers told him otherwise and urged him to watch the tape of the session. Only then did he recognize how badly he had done. “I get it,” he told one adviser. Obama’s poor performance then did not pose the same existential threat as Biden’s on Thursday night. Still, will Biden make the same acknowledgment in the coming days?

The second and only other scheduled debate is Sept. 10, hosted by ABC News. Between now and then, Republicans meet for their convention in July in Milwaukee and Democrats meet for theirs in August in Chicago. Trump will be sentenced after his convictions in the New York case involving hush money and falsified business records. The Supreme Court will rule imminently on Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from prosecution. So there are big events ahead.

Will Biden want another debate? Will Trump agree if Biden wants one? Is another debate too big a gamble for the president, or the lifeline he can grasp just as early voting begins? Those decisions are in the future. For now, all eyes will be on the president.