After Thursday's debate commentary: Biden's stumble raises fresh doubts among Democrats

The whole world saw a tired president speaking in a soft, hoarse voice, unable to communicate his thoughts effectively. Voters, already full of doubts about whether Biden's age and health are an obstacle to his next term, only reinforced these concerns, writes Jakub Marmurek.

On Friday, American media reported on "panic in the Democratic camp." Calls appeared in publications close to the president, asking him to withdraw from the presidential race for the good of American democracy and let someone younger face Trump. Democrats can console themselves with the fact that Biden's defeat took place several months before the election, not a few weeks. This gives the current president time to recover or his party time to change the candidate.

But can Biden still make up for the losses? Historically speaking, winning a televised debate has brought candidates an average poll boost of 0.7 percentage points within two weeks. In elections where very small vote differences in a few key states can be decisive, this is not an insignificant value. But even if Trump increases his lead by 1 or 2 percentage points after the debate, Biden has time to recover the losses within four months.

In 2012, Barack Obama, fighting for re-election, lost the first debate to Mitt Romney. There were also comments at the time that Obama had lost his chance for a second term. However, the president managed to win the election.

Obama did not have a problem with age and health, which will ultimately be a key factor for many voters in deciding whether to support Biden or not. A similar problem plagued Ronald Reagan in 1984. He was then 73 years old–eight years younger than Biden is today, making him the oldest sitting president at the time.

Reagan lost the first debate to Walter Mondale, often appearing as a confused, older man. However, he won the second debate by turning the issue of his age into a joke, saying, "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience."

Even more than Reagan after his first debate in 1984, Biden now needs to convince Americans that on Thursday he just had a bad day. Even during the debate, Democrats informed the media that the president was fighting a cold and hoarseness and therefore spoke so softly and unclearly.

In 2022, John Fetterman, recovering from a stroke and fighting for a Senate seat from Pennsylvania, performed poorly in a televised debate. Still, his visible struggle with the illness won him the sympathy of voters and helped secure his victory. However, it is unknown whether a similar mechanism will work for a candidate for the highest office in the States.

Biden now needs to show Americans a better side of himself. He must recover, deliver a few good, energetic speeches, and show that he has the strength to campaign actively. First, he must also arrange for another debate with Trump in September and then win it.

At the same time, his campaign must more effectively show Americans the dangers of a second Trump term than Biden did on Thursday. And these are significant from the point of view of liberal and moderate voters. Trump is running this year with a much more radical program than in 2016 and 2020, having also learned better during his four years in the White House exactly what to do to implement his proposals.

The question the party is asking itself today is: Is Biden still capable of this? Can he really take on Trump and win? Wouldn't it be better to put forward someone else?

This last option is possible until the Democratic convention, scheduled for August 19-22 in Chicago. If Biden, as commentators close to the Democrats have been demanding since yesterday, resigned and gave the convention delegates the freedom to choose a new candidate, new small primaries would begin within the party—candidates would fight for the votes of the convention delegates.

The problem is that there are too many potential candidates to replace Biden, and no candidacy is obvious. In some sense, it should seem natural for Biden to point to his vice president, Kamala Harris, as his successor, but few in the Democratic Party believe that the poorly rated politician could defeat Trump.

Among the potential candidates are popular Democratic governors—Gavin Newsom from California, Gretchen Whitmer from Michigan, Josh Shapiro from Pennsylvania, Wes Moore from Maryland, Senator Amy Klobuchar, or Congressman Ro Khanna. However, each of these candidacies has flaws, including Newsom, who is currently the most "presidential" looking.

Party leaders, including potential candidates, are cutting off the discussion about replacing Biden. Although theoretically, the convention in Chicago could choose someone else—even if the sitting president did not withdraw, it is not politically feasible. And nothing indicates that Biden is thinking about withdrawing. The president is known for his stubbornness, and American media reports that he is convinced that only he can stop Trump.

If anyone could persuade Biden to change his mind, it would be his wife, Jill Biden. However, the First Lady has been known as a determined supporter of her husband's run this year. After the debate, Biden announced that he does not intend to withdraw from the presidential race. "I intend to win," he declared.

It is not hard to imagine the worst scenario for Democrats now. In the coming weeks, the party may indeed argue internally about what to do next with Biden but will fail to make a decision to choose someone else or convince the president to resign. A weakened and internally divided party will finally give Biden the nomination in August, without much confidence in success.

At the same time, the president will not fare better in the coming months of the campaign than on Thursday. Recordings from rallies, meetings with supporters, and press conferences will show a tired, older man unable to meet the challenges of the presidency. If a second debate with Trump takes place at all, Biden will again perform poorly in it.

Voters will conclude that the president did not have a bad day in June, but simply is no longer fit to be president. Even if those voters do not vote for someone like Trump, staying home could give him victory in the key states necessary to secure a majority in the Electoral College.

If this scenario happens—potentially very dangerous for American democracy and its allies—the blame will not only fall on Biden but also on the Democratic Party leadership. They should have noticed earlier that Biden's age would be a serious problem in this campaign and force a generational change in the party.

As commentator Ezra Klein argued in a discussion in the New York Times, the option to replace Biden with someone else was closed by the surprisingly good results for the Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections. Republicans regained control of the House of Representatives, but the scale of the victory was much smaller than expected, and their results were significantly worse than usual for a party opposing the president at the midterm of his term.

This result strengthened Biden so much that no serious competitor to the president dared to challenge him this year. The most severe Democratic politicians, led by Newsom, became involved in Biden's campaign, treating it as a springboard to build their popularity before the 2028 presidential election.

For this relative success of 2022 and the resulting strengthening of Biden, Democrats may now pay with a second term for Trump, unless Biden simply had a bad day on Thursday, and things will only get better now.