President Joe Biden said on Friday that he intended to defeat Republican rival Donald Trump in the November presidential election, giving no sign he would consider dropping out of the race.
Mr Biden spoke after a feeble debate performance that dismayed his fellow Democrats.
“I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious,” Mr Biden said at a rally one day after the head-to-head showdown with his Republican rival – a showdown widely viewed as a defeat for the 81-year-old president.
“I don’t walk as easy as I used to; I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to; I don’t debate as well as I used to,” he said as the crowd chanted, “Four more years.”
“I would not be running again if I didn’t believe with all my heart and soul that I could do this job. The stakes are too high,” Mr Biden said.
Mr Biden’s verbal mumbles and occasionally meandering responses in the debate heightened voter concerns that he might not be fit to serve another four-year term, prompting some of his fellow Democrats to wonder whether they could replace him as their candidate for the November 5 U.S. election.
Campaign spokesperson Michael Tyler said no conversations were taking place about that possibility.
“We’d rather have one bad night than a candidate with a bad vision for where he wants to take the country,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One.
According to two people familiar with the meeting, the campaign handlers held an “all-hands-on-deck” meeting on Friday afternoon to reassure staffers that Mr Biden would not drop out of the race.
Though Mr Trump, 78, made several false claims throughout the debate, the focus afterwards was squarely on Mr Biden, especially among Democrats.
Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic Party leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, avoided answering directly when asked whether he still had faith in Mr Biden’s candidacy.
“I support the ticket. I support the Senate Democratic majority. We’re going to do everything possible to take back the House in November. Thank you, everyone,” he told reporters.
Some other Democrats likewise demurred when asked if Mr Biden should stay in the race.
“That’s the president’s decision,” Democratic Senator Jack Reed told a local TV station in Rhode Island.
However, several of the party’s most senior figures, including former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, said they were sticking with Mr Biden.
The New York Times editorial board that endorsed Mr Biden in 2020 called on him to drop out of the race to give the Democratic Party a better chance of beating Trump by picking another candidate.
The Biden campaign said it raised $14 million on Thursday and Friday and posted its single best hour of fundraising immediately after the Thursday night debate.
The Trump campaign said it raised $8 million on the night of the debate.
One possible bright spot for Mr Biden is that preliminary viewership data indicated that only 48 million Americans watched the debate, far short of the 73 million who watched the candidates’ last face-off in 2020.
Mr Biden, already the oldest American president in history, faced only token opposition during the party’s months-long nominating contest, and he has secured enough support to guarantee his spot as the Democratic nominee.
Mr Trump likewise overcame his intra-party challengers early in the year, setting the stage for a long and bitter general election fight.
If Mr Biden were to step aside, the party would have less than two months to pick another nominee at its national convention, which starts on August 19 – a potentially messy process that could pit Kamala Harris, the nation’s first Black female vice president, against governors and other officeholders whose names have been floated as possible replacements.