The panic inside the Democratic Party is growing.
The panic inside the Democratic Party is growing.
Democratic National Committee members lashed out at the campaign for gaslighting them about President Biden’s health, while the campaign team accused nervous Democrats of “bedwetting” over the debate catastrophe even as another major newspaper called for President Biden to quit his reelection bid.
Biden allies rushed over the weekend to ease concerns about the 81-year-old president’s faltering campaign by showing unwavering public support, even as many grumbled that the campaign wasn’t taking seriously enough the fallout from his abysmal debate performance.
Mr. Biden stayed out of sight at Camp David as his surrogates flocked to the Sunday talk shows. A report that Mr. Biden and his family spent the day discussing the future of his campaign was immediately dismissed by White House officials as “not accurate.”
But the first major post-debate poll released late Sunday spelled trouble for Mr. Biden and Democrats.
A CBS News/YouGov poll revealed that 72% of voters — including 41% of Democrats — say Mr. Biden doesn’t have the mental and cognitive abilities to serve as president. That’s up from 65% of registered voters and 29% of Democrats who voiced concerns about the president’s mental acuity in the same poll two weeks ago.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison and Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez held a Saturday afternoon call to reassure some of the party’s most influential members that Mr. Biden was here to stay and up to the task of running for a second term.
Some on the call were frustrated that the pair did not take questions and offered a rosy assessment of Mr. Biden’s chances in November against former President Donald Trump, leaving them feeling like they were being “gaslit.”
“There were a number of things that could have been said in addressing the situation. But we didn’t get that. We were being gaslit,” Colorado DNC member Joe Salazar told The Associated Press.
Other members on the call also described the call as “feeling gaslit.” The term refers to being manipulated or misled into not believing what one plainly sees or feels.
The Biden campaign also pushed back Sunday, sending a fundraising email accusing some in the party of “bedwetting.”
Deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty insisted in the note that Mr. Biden will be the Democrats’ nominee and urged the party to support him.
