MSNBC contributor Claire McCaskill said Thursday after the presidential debate that President Joe Biden’s performance was so bad that Vice President Kamala Harris or Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) should be the front-runner.
“Joe Biden had one thing he needed to do tonight, and he didn’t do it,” McAskill said. “He had one thing he needed to accomplish, and that was to reassure the public that he was fit for the job at his age, and he didn’t do it tonight. Now, does the fact that my phone is being inundated with calls from senators and campaign workers and donors and big donors across the country mean that Joe Biden is not the candidate? I don’t know. We’ll know more about this and the polls in the coming weeks. But I think there are a few things going on right now. I don’t think I’m the only one whose heart is breaking right now. There are a lot of people who watched this broadcast tonight and felt terrible about Joe Biden. And you have to ask yourself, why did this happen? Why did we spend so much time tonight talking about the vice president instead of talking about the president?” I don’t know how the rest of the story is written. I don’t know if this can be fixed. Maybe we can, and maybe this situation will heal itself because Trump is so terrible. But what I’m hearing from many people, some of whom hold high elected office in this country, you can imagine where they work, there’s more going on tonight than lamentation. I think we feel like we’re in a crisis.”
She added, “This may be a situation that we’ll all be talking about over the next few days. I think it’s time for Ted Kaufman, Donilon and Ron Klain to have a heart-to-heart with the president about his ability to exude strength. There’s no bigger fan of Kamala Harris than I am, and Gavin Newsom did a great job tonight as his surrogate and made statements that I agree with, but these two are sending a signal to the many Americans who are paying attention why they’re not running, why the Democratic Party shouldn’t put them at the top of the list of candidates and use them to shore up the president’s obvious weaknesses tonight.”
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