Seventy-two hours after the controversy in Atlanta final week, President Biden and people closest to him have settled on the identical technique law enforcement officials use to shoo bystanders away from a automobile crash: “Nothing to see right here.”
In keeping with the speaking factors being repeated by the president’s aides and surrogates, the controversy was a 90-minute blip in an extended marketing campaign. Mr. Biden didn’t have “an excellent evening,” as he informed donors Saturday, however fund-raising goes robust and he has already bounced again.
Aides have been pushing an analogous message for greater than a yr, as polls have proven that voters are frightened concerning the president’s age. They’ve disregarded such issues, calling them little greater than a creation of the media and the MAGA motion supporting the marketing campaign of former President Donald J. Trump.
Jen O’Malley Dillon, the president’s prime marketing campaign strategist, mentioned on Saturday that any drop within the polls could be the results of “overblown media narratives.” Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, dismissed nervousness concerning the president’s efficiency, saying on “Fox Information Sunday” that “it’s like one debate.”
And but, just like the bystanders on the automobile crash, voters don’t should be informed what occurred in the course of the face-off with Mr. Trump. They noticed it with their very own eyes.
“Telling individuals they didn’t see what they noticed will not be the way in which to reply to this,” Ben Rhodes, who was a prime overseas coverage adviser to President Barack Obama, wrote on social media an hour after the controversy ended on Thursday.
The president will not be attempting to persuade voters that he received the controversy or that his efficiency was one thing to brag about. However he has spent the previous three days downplaying its affect, blaming the media for failing to report on Mr. Trump’s lies and insisting that voters thought his rival did worse.
At fund-raisers, speeches and different appearances, Mr. Biden has used teleprompters — one thing he couldn’t use in the course of the debate — and his aides typically have shielded him from reporters. On Sunday, he was secluded together with his household and prime aides at Camp David, the presidential retreat within the Maryland mountains, for a go to that had been deliberate for months.
“Because the debate, polls present somewhat motion, and we’ve moved us up, really,” Mr. Biden informed donors at a fund-raiser within the Hamptons on Saturday evening. Journalists have been all making a mistake by speaking about his efficiency, the president informed the room stuffed with supporters.
“The large takeaway have been his lies,” Mr. Biden mentioned, referring to Mr. Trump. “Folks remembered how dangerous issues have been throughout his presidency, how a lot they disliked him.”
Quentin Fulks, Mr. Biden’s deputy marketing campaign supervisor, was much more direct in the course of the workers’s weekly convention name.
“Nothing basically modified about this election final evening,” he insisted.
Which will grow to be true, although it’s going to possible take a while for high quality polling to find out. However within the meantime, critics of the method say it dangers making the president and his marketing campaign appear woefully out of contact with — and even dismissive of — the voters they should woo so as to defeat Mr. Trump in November.
Tommy Vietor, a communications alumnus of Mr. Obama’s administration and one of many hosts of the favored “Pod Save America” podcast, mentioned the marketing campaign can’t spin its method out of this.
“You’ll be able to’t say that the way forward for American democracy is at stake after which inform anybody involved concerning the debate final evening to cease mattress wetting or develop a backbone,” he wrote on social media. He added a profanity, calling it “insulting to individuals who care deeply concerning the nation and know the way a lot is on the road.”
The problem for members of Mr. Biden’s crew over the subsequent a number of days shall be to persuade Democrats that the marketing campaign’s model of actuality is, effectively, actual. They’ll attempt to forestall extra of his allies from calling for Mr. Biden to step apart, as a number of have already carried out. And they’ll work to refocus the race on Mr. Trump, who’s planning for an much more excessive agenda than his first time period.
In the long run, although, will probably be as much as the voters to resolve what they consider. And whereas there have been fewer individuals watching the controversy on Thursday than in earlier years, 51.3 million viewers nonetheless tuned in to see the president’s efficiency — the largest viewers for any occasion within the marketing campaign up to now.
David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, wrote over the weekend that Mr. Biden “went to items on CNN, in entrance of tens of thousands and thousands of his compatriots.” To stay because the Democratic candidate, he wrote, “could be an act not solely of self-delusion however of nationwide endangerment.”
“Watching Thursday’s debate, observing Biden wander into senselessness onstage, was an agonizing expertise,” Mr. Remnick mentioned, “and it’s sure to obliterate ceaselessly all these obscure and certified descriptions from White Home insiders about good days and dangerous days.”
