The Inside Game: Gabriel Debenedetti

Who Can Make Joe Go? Democrats stared into the debate abyss. Now they ask if he's a lost cause.

A few minutes into the June 27 presidential debate in Atlanta, when Joe Biden’s wavering answers first trailed off into incoherence, I got a text from a Democratic congressman close to the president’s campaign. “I’m drinking to compensate,” he wrote.

The congressman’s wry, resigned shtick was short-lived. Biden’s fading affect—his raspy voice, gray pallor, and wandering, wide-eyed stare—was not a momentary glitch. The tone of the official’s texts moved from resignation to alarm. He had always defended the president, but soon he was having the same sort of conversations that Democratic lawmakers, donors, and strategists were having across the country, asking, with increasing panic: What do we do with Biden now?

By the debate’s half-hour mark, I started getting messages from top Democrats who couldn’t bear to watch any longer. The chatter was loose but agitated: What the fuck is happening? Who exactly is responsible for letting him go out there like this?

Before the first hour was through, one top party strategist told me she’d begun fielding calls about the feasibility of replacing Biden on the ticket. Late that night, one longtime ally of the president told me he thought it was 50-50 he could remain the candidate. By the next morning, a Friday, all anyone in Democratic politics could ask (anyone outside Biden’s inner circle) was the inevitable next question: Who could convince him to step aside and how soon can they do it?