President Biden’s campaign said in a memo Saturday that Biden’s poor performance in Thursday night’s presidential debate “did not change the course of the race.”
“Preliminary polling from CNN, 538, Survey USA, Morning Consult and Data for Progress indicates that, as we expected, the debate did not change the course of the race,” Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a memo. “This is consistent with what our internal campaign polling after the debate showed: the President maintained his support with 2020 voters and voter opinion did not change.”
The Biden campaign’s memo on Saturday came after days of criticism of the president following Thursday’s debate against former President Trump, during which Biden appeared to stumble and stutter, sparking widespread anxiety among members of his own party and raising questions about whether he should continue campaigning as the Democratic nominee.
“It’s a familiar story: Washington voters have given up on Joe Biden after Thursday night’s debate,” O’Malley Dillon said in the memo, “but the data from battleground states tells a different story. Across every key metric, the data shows it has not changed the perception of the American public. Our supporters are more enthused than ever, and Donald Trump has simply reminded voters why he was fired four years ago and failed to expand his support beyond his MAGA base.”
Even staunch Democrats, some of whom have worked with former President Barack Obama in the past, said they found the debate unfolding frustrating.
“Obviously the debate was awful,” former Obama administration speechwriter and “Pod Save America” co-host Jon Favreau posted on social platform X on Friday morning. “We must defeat Donald Trump. We must field a candidate who can do that.”
Those around Biden have pushed back against rumors he would withdraw.
“Of course he’s not backing down,” Biden campaign spokesman Seth Schuster told The Hill after the presidential debate performance.
The Hill has reached out to the Trump campaign.
