A focus-group memo obtained by NR shows how center-left Democrats in the midwest reacted to Biden’s performance.
Liberal pundits weren’t alone in panicking over President Joe Biden’s disastrous first presidential debate performance: center-left Democratic voters who went into the night supporting Biden abandoned the president in droves after watching his performance, according to focus-group findings shared with National Review.
Members of a live online focus group of liberal voters in Michigan and Minnesota became despondent as the debate went on and Biden’s diminished mental state became undeniable. When the debate began, 83 percent of participants said they’d vote for Biden if the election were held today. By the end of the debate more than half of the focus group had determined that their party needs a new nominee.
Public-affairs firm P2 Insights conducted the focus group and summarized its findings in a memo provided to NR. The group asked questions in real-time to voters who responded through messages and video recordings. The voters were primarily younger liberals who make up a significant part of the Democratic base.
Less than 15 minutes into the debate, participants were sounding the alarm about Biden’s age and appearance on the debate stage in response to a question on the subject.
“He does not look good like he genuinely sounds and looks out of it,” one respondent said.
“He seems so elderly and unwell. He just lost his train of thought in the previous question and it was concerning,” a second respondent observed. “He’s staying somewhat together but he looks frail especially his opening walk and he’s struggling to maintain some continuity of thought so far,” another participant answered.
In contrast, former president Donald Trump looked stronger physically through the first 45 minutes, and received praise from the voters for his approach to foreign policy.
“Trump appears stronger in terms of vitality,” one participant said.
“Biden seems feeble, Trump seems more aggressive. So I suppose that Trump seems stronger, even though he’s only aggressively lying,” another person emphasized.
Biden’s team has effectively shielded him from public scrutiny throughout much of his first term, limiting unscripted public appearances like press conferences and on-camera interviews. As a result, some of the liberal voters were caught off-guard by how much the president appears to have aged since taking office.
“Biden is looking really, really old. Older than I remembered,” one woman remarked.
“Biden is in worst [sic] condition than I thought,” a second participant commented.
By the time the debate ended, many of the focus-group respondents were exasperated and urged the Democratic party to replace Biden with someone else, echoing the conversations playing out publicly among liberal commentators and Democratic operatives.
“Yes, I would hope that the DNC could replace Biden as the Democratic nominee,” a woman said.
“Yes, I think that they absolutely should replace Joe Biden with another democratic nominee. Someone that is younger and not as frail,” another added.
“I think they’d be wise to [replace Biden], Donald Trump is a threat to national security and he cannot be reelected. After that debate, if Joe Biden is on the ticket I don’t think he gets reelected,” a third person replied.
Throughout the debate, Biden stumbled over his words and had difficulties forming coherent sentences, a marked contrast from the uncharacteristically restrained and disciplined version of Donald Trump that appeared last night.
“And while the Biden campaigns spin as of this morning is that the beltway pundits and twitter chattering class don’t represent the vast majority of voters, our focus group clearly showed that there wasn’t much daylight between Van Jones and David Axelrod and rank and file Democrats in terms of how Biden’s performance was viewed,” the P2 focus-group memo concludes.
“Biden’s base problems only got worse last night and the move to push for this debate by Team Biden could go down as one of the major blunders in modern political history.”
It is highly unlikely Democrats will put another candidate at the top of the ticket, especially because Biden has already won 99 percent of pledged delegates ahead of the Democratic convention this summer.
At the convention, pledged Democratic delegates could go another route and vote for a different candidate to be the party’s choice, but this nightmare scenario almost certainly will not happen unless Biden himself decides to step down.
“I don’t debate as well as I used to,” Biden admitted at his rally in North Carolina on Friday. “But I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth.”
CNN hosted the debate from Atlanta, Georgia last night and nearly 48 million people watched on television along with 30 million on YouTube. While conservatives routinely point out Biden’s age difficulties, millions of Americans less tuned into day-to-day politics received exposure to Biden’s age last night that they might not have encountered otherwise.