Concerns among Democrats about President Biden’s fitness to run for re-election erupted into open panic on Tuesday, as the top sitting member of Congress called on Biden to withdraw and a host of other leading officials who have supported the president voiced their concerns.
One Democratic senator openly asked for assurances from the White House about Biden’s “condition” — “That this was a real anomaly, and not just the way he is today,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who told a local television station he was “shocked” by Biden’s performance.
Another Democratic senator, Peter Welch of Vermont, criticized Biden’s campaign for “a dismissive attitude toward people who raise questions for discussion.”
And later on Tuesday, Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas, a veteran progressive lawmaker, issued a statement saying Biden’s performance during the debate had disqualified him from running again.
“I had hoped that the debate would provide momentum to change that. It didn’t,” Mr. Doggett said. “Instead of reassuring voters, the president failed to effectively defend his many accomplishments and expose Trump’s many lies.”
Mr. Biden’s clumsy, halting debate performance on Thursday prompted a quiet panic among party officials and activists about whether he should be replaced on the ticket some four months before Election Day. But it also raised fresh fears among lawmakers, strategists and aides about the effect of his stumbles on his party’s ability to win crucial races that will determine control of the House and Senate.
“He needs to understand clearly,” Rep. Mike Quigley, Democrat of Illinois, said Tuesday on CNN, “that his decision not only affects who’s going to serve in the White House for the next four years, but it affects who’s going to serve in the Senate, it affects who’s going to serve in the House, and it’s going to affect decades to come.”
Democrats in congressional races across the country have long understood that they must outperform Biden to win their seats. To that extent, several Democratic operatives working on congressional races said Biden’s performance would have little bearing on strategy in lower-level races. But the new injection of doubt about their party leader’s fitness to serve has confronted them with a new set of difficult calculations about their own elections.
For now, leading Democrats are expressing strong support for Mr. Biden. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said during an appearance in Syracuse on Tuesday that he believed “yes” the president was fit to serve.
“I stand with Joe Biden,” he said.
But some acknowledge that the party has serious concerns about the situation. Representative Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat and former speaker, said it was “legitimate” to ask whether Mr. Biden’s bad night at the debate was a one-off gaffe or “a condition,” adding that former President Donald J. Trump would have to answer the same question about the lies he uttered.
And she admitted in an interview on MSNBC that she’s heard “mixed” feedback from Democratic donors about whether the president would run for another term.
In two statements from the House and Senate Democratic campaign arms, spokespeople stressed that the congressional races are “candidate-to-candidate battles,” as David Bergstein, the Senate campaign’s communications director, put it.
“House races have always been about the strength of our candidates, combined with the fact that Democrats deliver when they are in charge, while extreme Republicans sow chaos,” said Viet Shelton, a spokesperson for the House Democrats’ campaign arm. “That’s why recent polls has shown that Democrats outpace their Republican opponents on the battlefield. That hasn’t changed after the debate.”
