How things changed for President Joe Biden after the Atlanta debate – WSB-TV Channel 2

“I’m not the only one who’s heartbroken right now. There are a lot of people who watched this tonight who had terrible feelings for Joe Biden,” said former Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill.

During the debate, the 81-year-old president drifted away, often giving absurd answers and failing to denounce the former president’s many falsehoods.

Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign has always been based on a bet that voters would ultimately support a longtime politician with low approval ratings in a rematch that few Americans want. Despite those weaknesses, Biden’s team has insisted that he is uniquely positioned to prevent Trump from returning to the White House — as he did four years ago.

They have long predicted that Biden’s winning political coalition would eventually rally behind the Democratic president after enough reminders of Trump’s chaotic leadership. But there has been little sign of such confidence after Biden’s disappointing debate performance.

Since that debate last month, calls for Biden to withdraw have grown louder.

His poor performance in the debate sparked a wave of concern among Democrats and donors, who said publicly what some had been saying privately for months: that they did not think he would be up to the job for another four years.

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Concerns about Biden’s age have dogged him since he announced he was running for reelection, despite Trump being only three years younger at 78. Most Americans consider the president too old for a second term, according to an August 2023 poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. A majority also doubt his mental fitness to be president, though that is also a weakness for Trump.

Biden has often remarked that he is not as young as he once was, that he does not walk as easily or speak as fluently, but that he has wisdom and decades of experience, which are worth a lot.

“I give you my word as Biden. I would not run again if I didn’t believe with all my heart and soul that I can do this job,” he told supporters at a rally in North Carolina a day after the debate. “Because, quite frankly, the stakes are too high.”

But voters have other problems with him, too: He is deeply unpopular as a leader, even though his administration has guided the country through recovery from a global pandemic, presided over a booming economy and passed major bipartisan legislation that will impact the country for years to come. A majority of Americans disapprove of how he is handling his job, and he faces persistently low approval ratings on key issues, including the economy and immigration.

Biden’s age has emerged as a major factor in an investigation into his handling of classified documents. Special counsel Robert Hur said in February that the president came across in interviews with investigators as “a friendly, well-meaning older man with a poor memory.”

The president’s allies interpreted the statement as gratuitous and criticized Hur for including it in his report, and Biden himself angrily rejected descriptions of how he spoke about his late son.

Biden’s motivation for running was closely tied to Trump’s. He had retired from public service after eight years as vice president under Barack Obama and the death of his son Beau, but he decided to run after Trump’s comments following a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, when white supremacists descended on the city to protest the removal of its Confederate monuments.

Trump said: “There were some very bad people in the group, but there were also some very good people on both sides. On both sides.”

The failure of a sitting president to unequivocally condemn racism and white supremacy deeply offended Biden. Biden went on to win the 2020 election, and Trump refused to concede defeat and stood idly by for hours as his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, beating and bloodying law enforcement in a failed attempt to overturn the certification of Biden’s victory.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

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