Democrats are "freaking out" at the highest levels about president Joe Biden's debate performance, according to MSNBC's John Heilemann, and may have engaged in some difficult discussions about how to move forward without him as the party's nominee.
Voters have expressed concern about the 81-year-old president's age, and numerous Democrats expressed alarm at Biden's notable lack of vigor and inability to challenge Donald Trump's steady stream of falsehoods and low blows, and Heilemann revealed that party leadership are considering their options.
"I'll just start by saying that, without having an opinion, opinionizing about this," Heilemann told "Morning Joe." "As a matter of fact, having covered presidential debates since 1992, having seen a fair number of bad nights for candidates on first debates, bad nights for incumbents, some bad nights for challengers. In terms of measuring the degree of alarm of a presidential candidate's party about their performance, I have never seen anything like this by an order of magnitude."
"This is a reporting matter," he added. "Sitting congressmen, sitting senators, sitting governors, millionaires, billionaires, across the spectrum, people who have been supportive and loyal to Joe Biden since Day One, and continue in some respects to be supportive and loyal to Joe Biden, freaking out last night. I can't – as a reportorial matter, I can't overstate the degree of freakout about what they were seeing. I don't know what is going to happen now, but I will tell you, by the time you got to the first commercial break, you had the highest levels of the Democratic Party – senators, governors, congress people, biggest bundlers, biggest donors, there were conversations about, what do we do know? We have to figure out how that works."
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The Daily Mail reported last week on an alleged "secret Democratic plot" to replace Biden if he stumbled in Thursday's debate, and while Heilemann cast doubt on their sourcing, he said it wasn't far off from what he's been hearing behind the scenes.
"There was a story the other day in the totally non-credible, in many respects, Daily Mail, on Monday that said that the Clintons, the Obamas, [Senate majority leader Chuck] Schumer and [former House speaker Nancy] Pelosi were going to watch this debate, and if it did not go well for Joe Biden, they'd try to have the talk with him about stepping back," Heilemann said. "Many laughed at that – it was not a credible report. The Daily Mail, British tabloid, whatever. I had six good sources after that who said, that's not totally false."
"The interesting part of that was the Schumer and Pelosi piece," he added. "No one thinks Joe Biden would listen to the Obamas, the Clintons on this subject, but because he cares so much about Democrats in the House and Senate, there was some discussion about whether Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer privately were taking soundings on this question. I don't know what will happen now going forward, but I will say, these are the kinds of conversations that people are having now in the Democratic Party as we speak – what to do. The level of panic, for me, in my time covering politics, I've never seen a level of panic on this scale."
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