Joe Biden’s campaign was prepared to come out swinging after tonight’s debate against Donald Trump.
Instead, they were backed into a corner.
The campaign’s top surrogates wound up pinned at one end of the debate spin room by a mob of reporters on Thursday night, fielding questions about ousting 81-year-old Mr Biden at the top of the ticket and whether tonight’s performance fuelled more concerns about his fitness for office.
“Would you replace Biden?” a reporter shouted at California Governor Gavin Newsom.
The 56-year-old governor responded that he was “old fashioned,” and cared more about the “substance and facts” discussed rather than a frenzy over Mr Biden’s energy.
It was not the conversation that Democrats hoped to have tonight. But Mr Biden’s subdued performance during the 90-minute event, during which he sometimes stumbled through answers and spoke with a cold-induced rasp, sent Democrats into an immediate panic as reporters pressed on how his campaign would recover.
Voters concerns about his age already weighed heavily on the debate, and even Mr Biden’s staunchest supporters acknowledged the performance would likely not help.
David Plouffe, a Democratic strategist who managed Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, called it “a Defcon 1 moment,” referring to the US military phrase for the highest level of a nuclear threat.
“They seemed about 30 years apart tonight,” he said of the two candidates, who are fewer than four years apart in age. “And I think that’s going to be the thing that voters really wrestle with coming out of this.”
Andrew Yang, who challenged Mr Biden in 2020’s Democratic primary and dropped out early in the race, wrote on X that the president should “do the right thing” by “stepping aside and letting the DNC choose another nominee.” He added the hashtag #swapJoeout.
It is unlikely that Mr Biden will be replaced as the Democratic Party’s nominee for a number of reasons: he’s the incumbent president, there are only a handful of months left before the election and the chaotic process of choosing another nominee could derail the party’s chances of winning the White House in November.
Yet the debate was “an important reminder of why, after we save democracy and defeat Trump, we’ve got to end the gerontocracy,” Amanda Litman, who works to recruit young Democratic candidates, told the BBC.
“I think his job just became a little bit harder,” David Axelrod, another top Obama lieutenant, said on CNN.
Back in the spin room, the campaign’s surrogates answered question after question about Mr Biden’s performance. Try as they might, they could not change the conversation.
Congressman Robert Garcia of California told reporters that Mr Trump “lied, and lied, and lied again.”
The former president did make misleading statements during the debate. He falsely claimed that Democratic-controlled states wanted to allow abortion “after birth” – a talking point used by anti-abortion activists.
He also said Mr Biden “encouraged” Russian president Vladimir Putin to attack Ukraine, when in reality the Biden administration has staunchly backed Ukraine in the war.
The Biden campaign pushed similar talking points.
“Donald Trump is a liar. And a criminal. And he cannot be our president,” the campaign said in a statement after the debate.
Vice-President Kamala Harris echoed the attack. “Donald Trump lied over and over and over again,” she told CNN.
When he appeared at a post-debate watch party, Mr Biden zeroed in on this argument.
“They’re going to be fact-checking all the things he said,” the president told the crowd. “I can’t think of one thing he said that was true.”
“Look, we’re going to beat this guy, we need to beat this. I need you, in order to beat him. You’re the people I’m running for,” Mr Biden added.
After the debate, several of Mr Trump’s potential running mates, including Congressman Byron Donalds and Congresswoman Elise Stefanik as well as North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, fanned out across the spin room to declare victory for their party’s leader.
Top Trump campaign staff lingered after the debate to further spin their triumph.
Meanwhile, Democrats like Mr Newsom, Mr Garcia, and Senator Raphael Warnock made their appearances relatively brief, after answering the same questions over and over again about Mr Biden’s performance.
“I have been a surrogate for some presidential candidates in my time,” former Democratic US Senator Claire McCaskill told MSNBC. “When you’re a surrogate you have to focus on the positives,” she said.
But tonight, she said, she had to be “really honest.”
“He had one thing he had to accomplish, and that was to reassure America he was up to the job at his age. And he failed at that tonight.”