Joe Biden immediately faced calls from Democrats to drop out of the Presidential race following his catastrophic debate with Donald Trump last night, but the 81 year-old insisted he would go on. The Mail has more.
Biden’s campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt declared early this morning: “Of course he’s not dropping out.”
But a torrent of his own party members and strategists are clamouring for their aged President to throw in the towel off the back of the car-crash debate, with one anonymous Democrat telling NBC it was “time to talk about an open convention and a new Democratic nominee”.
“Biden is about to face a crescendo of calls to step aside,” one Biden-backing strategist told the New York Times, while another Democrat put it even more flatly to the Washington Post.
“We’re so f***ed,” he said. “He has great material. He just cannot deliver a single line.”
David Plouffe – a Democratic strategist who worked on Barack Obama‘s 2008 campaign – told MSNBC Biden’s showing was “kind of a DEFCON1 moment” – a reference to the highest alert level used by America’s defence community.
Plouffe also remarked that Trump and Biden looked “30 years apart”, despite an age gap of just three years between them.
One political analyst summed it up in the hours following the torturous 90-minute ordeal: “There’s going to be a lot of bedwetting (among Democrats) tonight.”
Trump meanwhile was seen contorting his face in shock and derision at Biden’s confused meandering and frequent gaffes in the debate, at one point telling millions of Americans watching at home: “I really don’t know what he [Biden] just said. He’s not equipped to be President. You know it and I know it.”
Worth reading in full.
The Telegraph‘s Tim Stanley quips that “this wasn’t a debate, it was a medical emergency… Never mind, will he last four years? The audience wasn’t sure he’d last 90 minutes.”
Hellbound and Down 