Joe Biden Fires Back at Age Criticism, Vows Re-election Bid After Debate

US President Joe Biden has responded to attacks about his age, telling supporters in a furious speech that he will win re-election in November. This follows a bad debate performance that raised concerns about his candidacy.

“I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious,” he said at a rally in the crucial state of North Carolina on Friday, one day after struggling in the televised duel with his Republican challenger, Donald Trump.

“I don’t walk as smoothly as I used to…”I don’t debate as well as I used to,” he admits. “But I know what I do know, I know how to tell the truth [and] I know how to do this job.”

Joe Biden, 81, said he felt in his “heart and soul” that he could serve another term as a cheering throng in Raleigh yelled, “four more years”.

While issues about Joe Biden’s age are not new, his weak performance on the debate stage, which included verbal blanks, a scratchy voice, and some difficult-to-follow responses, alarmed several Democrats and created new concerns about his campaign.

Mr Biden’s campaign has maintained that the country’s oldest presidential contender is still capable of serving another term. Despite his dismal performance, campaign organizers stated another nominee would not replace him.

“Absolutely not,” Mia Ehrenberg, a Biden campaign spokesperson, responded to concerns about whether Joe Biden would withdraw his candidacy.

While numerous campaign surrogates, including Vice President Kamala Harris, confessed to reporters that the president tripped during the debate, they reaffirmed their support for the older statesman and emphasized that his responses were more meaningful than Mr Trump’s.

“The president might have lost the debate on style, but he won it on facts, decency, and the ideas people think are important in this country,” campaign co-chair Mitch Landrieu said on CNN the morning after the debate.

In the days afterward, many senior Democrats and Biden supporters have made additional efforts to defend the former president’s performance and allay liberal concerns.

Former President Barack Obama, still one of the party’s most popular icons, remarked that “bad debate nights happen”.

“This election is still a choice between someone who fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself,” Obama said. He continued by stating that Trump is “someone who lies through his teeth for his own benefit”.

However, Democratic concerns about Joe Biden are far from allayed.

Party leaders, political operators, and those close to the president who talked with the BBC‘s Katty Kay described a worried party concerned about the strength of their candidate.

Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic House Speaker, stated that “from a performance standpoint, it wasn’t great”. Other Democrats, including Biden’s former communications director Kate Bedingfield, described the debate as “a really disappointing debate performance”.

Democratic contributors who talked anonymously to various media sources were more blunt, with one calling the performance “disqualifying”.

“The only way it could have been worse was if he had fallen from the stage. “Big donors are saying… he needs to go,” one Democratic operative told the Financial Times.

On Friday, the New York Times editorial board urged Mr. Biden to drop out. It urged Democrats to “acknowledge that Mr Biden can’t continue his race, and create a process to select someone more capable to stand in his place” .

Mr. Trump, however, staged his own rally in Virginia mere hours later, hailing a “big victory” in the debate, which CNN reported was watched by 48 million people on television and millions more online.

“Joe Biden’s problem is not his age,” Trump, 78, added. “It is his competence. He’s quite incompetent.

The former president dismissed suggestions that Biden will withdraw from the race, claiming he “does better in polls” than other Democrats, including California Governor Gavin Newsom and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Despite concerns raised by certain media pundits, early indications suggest that there has been “no change” in polls following the discussion, according to Washington Post columnist Philip Bump on BBC R4’s Today program.

Later in the program, pollster Frank Luntz stated that there might not be a big change in voters’ intentions because most Americans have already decided who they will vote for later this year.

However, early polls show that American voters saw Mr Trump as the overwhelming winner.

A post-debate poll conducted by liberal pollster Data for Progress revealed that 62% of potential voters who saw or read about the debate believed Trump won. Only 30% of those polled by the progressive polling company said Mr Biden won the debate.

Until more polling is done, fundraising could indicate sustained excitement for Joe Biden’s candidacy; a large shift in that direction could pose a serious challenge to Democrats.

In an apparent effort to demonstrate its continued momentum, the Biden campaign announced that the president had raised $14 million from fundraisers in recent days.

From the Thursday debate until Friday evening, it was reported that Joe Biden had raised more than $27 million for his campaign.

Joe Biden is reportedly expected to meet with other donors on Saturday. He has planned fundraisers in the affluent New York Hamptons and Red Bank, New Jersey.