Democrats have expressed concern at President Joe Biden performance with Donald Trump in the first televised debate of the 2024 presidential election campaign, with party insiders saying his early answers triggered panic
Trump repeatedly attacked Biden on the economy and his foreign policy record, while Biden took aim at his rival’s criminal conviction and alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election
Biden called Trump a “sucker”, a “loser,” and said he had the “morals of an alley cat”
Trump hit back, and said at one point: “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence, and I don’t think he did either”
Trump also repeated falsehoods – from abortion, to taxes and the deficit – and at first avoided answering if he would accept the 2024 election result
With less than six months until the presidential election in November, last night’s debate has sparked a fresh wave of can-Biden-bow-out speculation.
But even if Biden were to step down, the road to replacing him is long and winding.
All 50 US states have already held their presidential primaries. And in each one, Biden won nearly all of the “delegates” – the party officials who formally anoint the nominee at each party’s convention.
The only person who could direct those delegates elsewhere is Biden himself – an unlikely scenario unless he drops out before the Democratic convention in August.
And even if Biden were to step down, Democrats would be left with another major problem: who should replace him?
Polls suggest Vice-President Kamala Harris would not be popular among the American public. But there is no other obvious alternative waiting in the wings who could defeat Donald Trump.