Joe Biden acknowledges age, debate debacle, but vows to beat Donald Trump

North Carolina, June 29

President Joe Biden on Friday said he intended to defeat Republican rival Donald Trump in the November presidential elections, giving no sign of dropping out of the race after a feeble debate performance that dismayed his fellow Democrats.

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At an afternoon rally in Chesapeake, Virginia, Trump told supporters that he had a “big victory against a man looking to destroy our country”. “Joe Biden’s problem is not his age,” Trump said. “It’s his competence.” Trump’s advisers said they thought the debate would bolster their chances in Democratic-leaning states, including Virginia, which have not backed a Republican presidential candidate since 2004. Beforehand, some Trump supporters said they were struck by Biden’s poor performance.

“I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious,” an ebullient Biden said at a rally one day after the head-to-head showdown with his Republican rival. It is being widely viewed as a defeat of the 81-year-old president.

“I don’t walk as easy as I used to, I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to, I don’t debate as well as I used to,” he said, as the crowd chanted “four more years”.

“I would not be running again if I didn’t believe with all my heart and soul that I could do this job. The stakes are too high,” Biden said. His verbal stumbles and occasionally meandering responses in the debate have heightened voters’ concerns that he might not be fit to serve another four-year term and prompted some of his fellow Democrats to wonder whether they could replace him as their candidate for the November 5 elections.

Campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler said there were no conversations taking place about such possibility. “We’d rather have one bad night than a candidate with a bad vision for where he wants to take the country,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One.

The campaign held an “all hands on deck” meeting on Friday to reassure staffers that Biden was not dropping out of the race. Though Trump, 78, put forward a series of falsehoods throughout the debate, the focus afterward was squarely on Biden, especially among the Democrats.

Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic Party leader in the United States House of Representatives, avoided answering directly when asked whether he still had faith in Biden’s candidacy. “I support the ticket. I support the Senate Democratic majority. We’re going to do everything possible to take back the House in November. Thank you, everyone,” he told mediapersons.

Some other Democrats likewise demurred when asked if Biden should stay in the race. “That’s the President’s decision,” Democratic Senator Jack Reed told a local TV station in Rhode Island.

However, several of the party’s most senior figures, including former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, said they were sticking with Biden. “Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know. But these elections are still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and somebody who only cares about himself,” former Democratic President Barack Obama wrote on social media platform X.

The New York Times editorial board, which endorsed Biden in 2020, called on him to drop out of the race to give the Democratic Party a better chance of beating Trump by picking another candidate. “The greatest public service Mr Biden can now perform is to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election,” the board said. — Reuters

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