Leading Democrats on Sunday rushed to defend President Biden and ease concerns about his candidacy that emerged after he struggled to answer policy questions during Thursday's debate and failed to make a strong case against former President Donald J. Trump.
The surge in surrogates follows a concerted effort by Biden and his team over the weekend to reassure anxious donors, party leaders and supporters who have questioned whether he should continue in the race.
“They wouldn't be Democrats if they weren't at all anxious,” Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Georgia, told NBC News.
In interviews with multiple television stations, Warnock and other Democrats made a similar argument that Biden should be judged on his record as president over the past three and a half years, not on his performance in the 90-minute debate, and that voters should give more weight to Trump's numerous falsehoods during the debate and his continued indications that he will not accept his electoral defeat.
“I think the president has had a difficult night, just like all of us,” Maryland Governor Wes Moore told CBS News, adding that “Joe Biden is not going to withdraw from this race, and he shouldn't withdraw.”
Warnock and Moore are among a string of prominent Democrats who have spoken out to bolster Biden's standing within the party, including Rep. James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California (a former House speaker) and Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania.
In an interview with Fox News, Fetterman pointed to his own shaky performance in the 2022 debates after suffering a stroke and his subsequent victory. “Everybody was saying that was the end of my career,” he said, criticizing party members for “blundering in.”
Appearing on CNN, Clyburn and Pelosi, longtime strong Biden supporters, focused on Biden's record as president rather than his accomplishments.
“Joe Biden has provided great leadership over the last three and a half years, so I don't think there's any problem with his leadership over the next four years,” Clyburn said. He also criticized Trump for referring to “black jobs” during the debate, suggesting that “there are black jobs and there are white jobs.”
Pelosi strongly opposed “making a judgment on the president after one debate” and predicted voters would be more concerned about abortion rights, the economy and climate change, adding that “the reactions to Donald Trump's lies may not be getting attention on television, but people are.”
One of the few Democrats to publicly voice these concerns is Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland. “There are very honest, serious and rigorous conversations going on at all levels of our party,” Raskin told MSNBC, arguing that this is a good thing, contrasting it with “the complete lack of dialogue and discussion within the Republican Party after the conviction of Donald Trump.”
Republicans continued their offensive on Sunday, attacking Biden's debate performance and questioning his eligibility, while also defending Trump's claims about the 2020 election and the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, Trump's vice presidential nominee, appeared on NBC News and responded to Democrats who defended Biden's cognitive ability by saying, “The whole of America saw it. You know who else saw it? Our opponents saw it. President Putin saw it. Chairman Xi Jinping saw it. The Ayatollahs saw it.”
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a one-time Trump critic who has since become an ardent supporter, made similar allegations against Biden, with whom he served in the Senate.
“He's compromised,” Graham told CNN. “That's the story. What the world saw was a compromised president.”
Republicans, meanwhile, struggled to defend Trump's own debate performance, in which he spoke more clearly than Biden but made many false claims and suggested he might refuse to accept the election results if he lost again, as he did in 2020.
Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, another of Trump's running mates, accused journalists of failing to fact-check Biden. “There was a 24-hour period when virtually everyone was honest about the astonishing contrast between Donald Trump's energy and grasp of the facts and Joe Biden's apparent incompetence in carrying out the job of the presidency,” he told CBS News. “And now, of course, we've moved into a new media cycle where people are trying to mount a cover-up.”
Burgum inaccurately compared Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election to those of past Democrats who only pursued legal challenges and conceded defeat. “Donald Trump left the White House at the end of his term on Jan. 20,” Burgum said on NBC. “The transition has been smooth.”
When moderator Kristen Welker pointed out that the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters on January 6, 2021 in an attempt to stop the certification of the election “was not necessarily a smooth transition of power,” Burgum replied, “Well, I think you'd have to say it was a smooth transition of power.”
Graham said on CNN that Trump was right not to promise to accept the election results.
“What can I say?” asked Mr. Graham. “'Oh, I'll accept it even if I feel cheated'?”