Since President Biden announced last year that he would run for re-election, those in his inner circle have closed ranks and dodged the obvious question: No, they insisted, he is not too old to run for re-election.
The news media, they said, was unfairly fixated on their age. Republicans were posting wildly distorted video clips on social media to make them look weaker than they actually are. Hand-wringing Democrats were merely “bed-waiters” over the prospect of an 86-year-old president by the end of a second term.
Then there was a discussion. And now the days of denial in the White House are over. Former President Donald J. The president’s confidants simply cannot shake off concerns about his ability after his shaky performance in Thursday night’s showdown with Trump. With the Democratic Party struggling to contain the brush fire of alarm, his team is now forced to confront the issue.
Mr. Biden, 81, himself acknowledged on Friday that he is no longer young and that he has lost a step in the debate, even as he made a stronger case for himself at a spirited rally in Raleigh, N.C. Debate stage the night before in Atlanta. The Biden team seized on the recognition of former Democratic allies President Barack Obama and Representative James E. of South Carolina. Clyburn rejects the president’s call to hand the nomination to a younger candidate.
But many aggrieved Democrats, including some in his own administration, wondered how it came to be and, fairly or not, blamed the president’s team for allowing it to happen: how those close to Mr. Biden had not spoken to him. running? How could they agree to discuss it knowing that he could stumble so badly? How could they not have better prepared him for the foreseeable challenges during a week in hiding at Camp David?
“Last night was shocking because we heard that he was preparing and so on,” David Axelrod, who was a senior adviser to Mr. Obama, said the morning after the debate. “And the first 10 minutes were a disaster, and it’s hard to understand how that happened.” As it turned out, he added, “it was a great opportunity to address people’s concerns and it backfired.”
So far, Mr. Biden’s allies have often gone after those who have raised questions about the president’s age. While Special Counsel Robert K. While Hurr decided not to press charges against Mr. Biden for mishandling classified documents, he released a report explaining that one factor was that the president would strike the jury as “a well-meaning, old man with a poor memory.” Mr. Biden’s team censured Mr. Hurr for overstepping the bounds of his job and unfairly defaming the president.
Mr. Axelrod was one of the Democrats who long warned about the dangers of running for a presidential candidate who made his debut in national politics the same year the video game Pong was introduced, an explanation that made him one of Mr. Biden’s advisers.
But Mr. Axelrod said in an interview Friday that he did not want to second-guess them. “I’m not going to discredit their thinking,” he said. Age is “a funny thing,” he said, and “it may have been at the time they were saying they were in a different place.”
When it comes to his age, Mr. Biden can present it differently depending on the moment. The two events on Thursday and Friday featured two scenarios, and were, as in their times, cases of night and day.
The Mr. Biden fired at the Raleigh rally was what his closest advisers see him as — someone with the power to travel nine time zones, from international summits to political fundraisers, to ask sharp questions and grill without preparation. Aides, who make wise decisions on difficult policy issues and stand up for decency against demagogues.
The night before in Atlanta Mr. Biden on stage did what his advisers didn’t like to see, or chose not to like — who shuffled the lecture, slurred his words, lost his train of thought, made cryptic comments. And instead of projecting the aura of authority and power expected of a commander in chief, his mouth stares blankly.
“I think the problem is that this is episodic,” said Elaine Kamerk, who worked in the White House under President Bill Clinton and is a longtime member of the Democratic National Committee. She recalled sitting just feet from Mr. Biden at an event last spring and being impressed by how adept he was at discussing policy, remembering names and speaking without notes.
“I thought this man doesn’t have dementia, this man is fine,” she said. “Unfortunately, that man was not the man on television last night. I think the problem is that it comes and goes and, at this point in life, people have good days and bad days and, unfortunately, he had a very bad night last night.”
The Democratic freakout following his bad night was surprising. Democrats used words like “nightmare”, “disaster” and “horrific”. Red-state Democrats were in the doldrums, and Biden’s aides feared that donor money would dry up, diminishing expectations of financial leverage over Mr. Trump.
Mr. Biden’s team tried to buy time in the hope that the panic would subside, advising nervous donors to wait to process what had happened. The President’s colleagues shed light Flash poll And dial groups show that the overall race hasn’t changed following the debate. They pointed to a campaign focus group that was said to show that support for Mr. Biden increased among swing voters in the Midwestern state because they agreed with his positions on critical issues.
“He didn’t have the best night on the debate stage,” Michael Taylor, campaign communications director, told reporters aboard Air Force One. “But you’d rather have a bad night than a candidate with a bad vision for where he wants to take the country.” He added that there had been “no conversation” about Mr. Biden being sidelined, nor had any staff changes been considered.
The president’s allies tried to draw attention to the performance of Mr. Trump, 78, who has been marked by dozens of false and misleading statements and his own confusing moments. Seeking a promising model, Biden’s allies touted John Fetterman, who won a Senate seat in Pennsylvania in 2022 despite the lingering effects of a stroke. By late Friday, some Democrats had returned to the fold, fearing the fallout from a Trump victory and concluding that if Mr. Biden is unlikely to drop out, they need to back him despite their concerns.
If any of the president’s advisers have explicitly addressed Mr. Biden’s age with him, they have not acknowledged it. According to recent interviews with dozens of his closest aides and friends, the president has not engaged in any organized process outside of his family to decide whether to run for a second term.
None of the advisers described a meeting or memo outlining the pros and cons of a re-election campaign that might have addressed age consequences. No one said they discouraged him from running or, for that matter, discussed how to address his age if he did. Instead, he told them to just assume he was running until he decided otherwise.
Such a conversation would be painfully difficult for the president’s aides. There’s something fundamentally different about raising such a personal issue with a boss as opposed to moral factors like battleground states, voting, or policy questions.
Mr. Biden’s closest current and former aides, such as Ron Klein, Anita Dunn, Jeffrey D. The Giants, Steve Ricchetti, Mike Donilon, Jane O’Malley Dillon and Bruce Reed, deeply admire and respect the president. According to fellow Democrats, they don’t want to hurt him and see the best in him.
“They’re famous for being really, really loyal,” Ms Kamarck said. “He’s like a father figure to Ron Klein. What do you say to your father? This is hard, very hard.”
Mr. Klein, Ms. Dunn and other top aides declined to comment or did not respond Friday, but White House aides on their behalf said they all supported Mr. Biden’s decision to run for re-election and still do. Mr. Zients and Ms. Dunn held a staff meeting at the White House on Friday to calm nerves, telling aides that there are tough days in any campaign but that they will get through it together.
James Carville, who helped run Mr. Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign, said Mr. Biden’s circle was tight. “The people around President Biden have been with him forever,” he said. “I think the culture of their White House is different than what I’m going to be familiar with.” He added that “those guys are great” but “Ron or Mike or Anita, they’re not peers.”
Indeed, given his age and experience, Mr. Biden has as few people he sees as true peers as any presidential peer can have. His relationships with Mr. Clinton and Mr. Obama are complicated, and some Biden advisers said he would have been devastated if either of those former presidents had told him not to run last year or to consider dropping out. Most of the senators who served with Mr. Biden for so many years, whose opinions he valued, have largely disappeared. Ted Kaufman, his close friend and longtime aide to his successor in the Senate, has been the most supportive of his re-election bid.
The only people advisers believe will influence him about such a profound decision are family members, particularly Jill Biden, the first lady, who is said to have strongly encouraged his re-election campaign in the first place, and his sister, Valerie Biden Owens, who spent her years in the Senate. Meanwhile, he was a political advisor.
“He’s a very proud person,” said Mr. Axelrod, who worked with Mr. Biden when Mr. Obama was vice president. “He’s a guy who’s always believed he’s been underestimated his whole life and he’s defied the odds. So I don’t know what his state of mind is. There are others who are now close to him. But I know there is a lot of concern.”