ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — President Biden tried to assure voters in an interview that he's still fit to run for a second term, telling ABC News he'll only drop out if “the Lord Almighty” tells him to.
10 Tampa Bay political analyst Dr. Lars Hafner said Biden didn't allay Democratic fears in an exclusive interview with ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos.
“I thought that the president was very defiant and not wanting to admit to anything that was going to cause any more of a messaging problem for him,” Hafner said
The 81-year-old Biden made it through the 22-minute interview without any major blunders that would inflict further damage to his imperiled candidacy, but it appeared unlikely to fully tamp down concerns about his age and fitness for another four years and his ability to defeat Donald Trump in November.
It left Biden in a standoff against a not-insignificant faction of his party with four months to go until Election Day, and with just weeks until the Democratic National Convention. The drawn-out spectacle could benefit Biden’s efforts to remain in the race by limiting the party’s options to replace him. But, it also could be a distraction from vital efforts to frame the 2024 race as a referendum on Trump.
“This interview tonight, while it was a good first step, it wasn't anything that was going to alleviate anybody's thought process that saw that debate the other night,” says Hafner. “To think that, ‘you don't get younger as days go on, you only get older.’”
During the interview, Biden insisted he was not more frail than earlier in his presidency. He said he undergoes “ongoing assessment” by his personal doctors and they “don't hesitate to tell me” if something is wrong.
“Can I run the 100 in 10 flat? No. But I’m still in good shape,” Biden said.
As for the debate, “I didn’t listen to my instincts in terms of preparing,” Biden said.
Biden suggested that Trump’s disruptions — from just a few feet away — had flustered him.
“I realized that, even when I was answering a question and they turned his mic off, he was still shouting and I let it distract me," Biden said. "I’m not blaming it on that. But I realized that I just wasn’t in control.”
At times, Biden rambled during the interview, which ABC said aired in full and without edits. At one point, he started to explain his debate performance, then veered to a New York Times poll, then pivoted to the lies Trump told during the debate. Biden also referred to the midterm “red wave” as occurring in 2020, rather than 2022.
Hafner said it’s the candidates down ballot in November that will continue making the most noise for a change and the top of the ticket.
“They can't get that visual out of their head from the interview or debate the other night,” he said. “And that's causing a lot of angst. And they know that the trickle down from the top of the ticket down to even your local school board, for that matter, your local dog catcher can be impacted. And certainly, in Florida, those amendments can be impacted that are so important to Democrats, including amendment number four, the abortion amendment.”
