Biden Camp Moves Into Full Damage Control

Never In American History Was There A Debate Performance As Bad As Biden's

I like to say that at Elice Island “we love a good story.” Well, there’s been no BIGGER story since last Thursday’s debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

I’m not writing this to be political, but rather because the turn of fortune that appears to have taken place in the wake of the debate is unlike anything we’ve ever seen in American politics. Considering the importance of the upcoming election and the passions on both sides, it is worth taking note whenever something unprecedented happens (and there’s certainly been a lot of that lately).

The question, (as it is in any good story), is what happens next?

For Biden, it’s an attempt to turn the tide following his disastrous debate performance. The Biden administration faces a steep challenge. Never mind the actual job of being President, the responsibilities for which still rest with the 81-year-old Joe Biden for the next six or seven months. There is also the dual problem of messaging and fundraising for the Biden camp, both of which have gone awry in the last five days.

Let’s look at some numbers to see what tale they tell. In April Joe Biden raised about $1.7 million per day.  The total amount raised was $33 million. It breaks down like this. Biden raised $27 million on debate day. Since last Thursday’s debate he’s raised $6 million. About half of that six mil is probably pre-committed to Biden fundraisers set this week. Which means that Joe maybe raised maybe $3 million in the four days after the debate that revealed him to be in the throes of senility means he is only raising about $700k per day you see that number has dropped down to about $700,000 per day. That’s a serious drop off. When the fundraising dries up, the pressure to replace Biden will ratchet up. 

Plus the bad headlines and the calls for ‘ol Joe to step aside kept pouring in over the weekend. It’s fairly safe to say that impartiality on the part of the mainstream media has been a thing of the past for decades by this point, so it is something to see as headline after headline and op-ed after op-ed (four in the New York Times alone) poured in calling fro Biden to step aside.

Ouch.

Despite this, word out of the Biden camp is he ain’t going nowhere. “The Big Guy” is staying put.

Oy.

There is some talk about the delegates replacing Biden at the convention but as I understand it the law prevents the delegates from doing so

Even if Biden did step aside it raises another big problem. All the money raised by the Biden-Harris campaign, that whole war chest cannot simply be slid over if the Democrats decided to pick someone else to run at the top of the ticket. Which means the donors would need to re-pledge the money for a whole new candidate. And who’s that going to be?

According to reports on social media and certain news sites, this weekend saw a flurry of phone calls from Barack Obama and other high-ranking Democratic Party officials trying to get in touch with donors to figure out whether or not they'd be willing to support an alternative slate of candidates. This is, of course, assuming that Joe Biden is willing to step aside as president and not run again, which, according to reports coming from the White House, is not on the table. President Biden is committed to running, and even held a rally over the weekend trying to drum up support from his base.

It's worth mentioning here that the Joe Biden who showed up at his rally the day after the debate looked much better. He must have gotten a double dose of whatever cocktail they usually shoot him up with to enable him to appear like a functioning human being with a working brain — as opposed to the Joe Biden who showed up for the debate who looked like he was barely going to make it across the finish line.

In a CBS poll released on Sunday, 27% of registered voters believe Biden has the mental and cognitive health to serve as president, down from 35% in early June. That means that 73% of the country thinks he is mentally unfit to run again. 

How about mentally fit enough to run the country?  That was a question Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, was whispering following disastrous debate performance by the current President of the United States. Johnson knows — as we all do — that it wasn’t just the American public watching; our enemies were watching that debate, and the question of whether or not the Commander in Chief is a feeble old man in the throes of senility is one that needs to be addressed before November 5.

Interestingly, following the debate performance, two things that did go up were the stock market futures, based on the increasing likelihood of a Donald Trump presidency, as well as the Vegas betting odds, which rose to 54.3%  for President Trump being returned to The Oval Office come November 5.

I can’t imagine what will happen next in this season of “America” but I’m here for it.