‘Oh God Why’: Democratic Elite Panic Over Biden’s Debate Performance

Asawin Suebsaeng and Andrew Perez

28 June 2024 at 0:23 am·3-min read

At 9 p.m., Joe Biden and Donald Trump began their first televised debate of the 2024 presidential election. Less than an hour into it, various Democratic members of Congress and their staff were frantically messaging each other, panicking about the very real possibility of a second Trump administration and asking one another if there’s any way that Biden can be replaced as the party’s nominee by the Chicago convention in August.

Nine sources across the Democratic elite — lawmakers and aides on Capitol Hill, longtime party operatives, moneymen, and even current Biden officials — watched the debate in horror, and relayed their candid assessments and visceral panic to Rolling Stone in real time. All feared Biden’s performance at the debate could help hand the federal government back to an increasingly authoritarian and openly corrupt Trump and his MAGA zealots. Each one conceded it might be best if the sitting president were not the 2024 nominee, and wondered if, as one Democratic lawmaker put it, an “intervention” should be staged as soon as possible to push the White House to get Biden to step aside.

According to written communications reviewed by Rolling Stone and two sources familiar with the matter, as the Biden-Trump debate was ongoing, several Democratic lawmakers and numerous staffers on Capitol Hill were feverishly venting to one another that Biden should not be the party’s pick to face Trump on Election Day in November, and that intra-party pressure should immediately be applied to determine a successor.

“OH GOD WHY,” messaged a Biden fundraiser mid-debate, describing the president’s performance as potentially justifying every hysterical, innuendo-drenched jab Team Trump had ever made about Biden’s age and mental fitness. “Who allowed him to go on like this?” one Biden administration official asked, rhetorically.

To be clear, Trump’s debate performance was in no way acceptable — he lied, blustered, and bluffed his way through the evening. But he appeared superficially alert in a way that Biden simply did not. Biden frequently failed to counter Trump’s lies, and when he attempted to do so, he made inscrutable arguments and occasionally lost his train of thought outright.

For all of Republicans’ talk ahead of the debate about how Biden would surely be hopped up on drugs, vitamins, or Mountain Dew, the president appeared sober — and distressingly so. Halfway through the debate, NBC News reported, “Two sources familiar with the situation say ‘President Biden has a cold.’”

That report did nothing to quell Democrats’ panic about Biden’s performance. Immediately after the debate ended, CNN and MSNBC’s panels were filled with chatter about how Democratic Party bigwigs and operatives are spiraling, and trying to figure out a path forward — with or without (emphasis on without) Biden.

On the surface, Biden’s campaign brass presented a calm, happy face to the public by late Thursday night.

“Tonight, President Biden presented a positive and winning vision for the future of America — one in which every American has a fair shot at the American dream, where every one of our rights are protected, and where our president fights to strengthen our democracy — not to tear it down,” Biden’s campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement blasted out to the media.

A Biden adviser similarly said, “President Biden is the only person who has ever beaten Donald Trump. He will do it again. Donald Trump did not give voters any reason to vote for him tonight. On the issues, the American people are with Joe Biden.”

Others in the Democratic Party, including some working in Biden’s administration, offered a rather different assessment.

“Disaster,” said the Biden administration official.

Ben Rhodes, a former Obama administration national security official, posted on X: “Telling people they didn’t see what they saw is not the way to respond to this.”

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