Live Updates: After Halting Debate Performance, Biden Tries to Reassure Democrats at Rally (2024)

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Trump takes a victory lap as Biden seeks to quell debate anxieties. Here’s the latest.

But on Friday, Michael Tyler, the director of communications for the Biden campaign, said there were no internal conversations about replacing Biden on the ticket “whatsoever.”

Here’s what else to know:

• Trump hammers Biden on debate performance. Mr. Trump seized on the debate right from the start of a roughly 90 minute campaign rally in Chesapeake, Va., on Friday afternoon. “Hello Virginia, did anybody last night watch a thing called the debate?” Mr. Trump said. “The question voters should be asking themselves today is not whether Joe Biden can survive a 90-minute debate performance, but whether America can survive four more years of crooked Joe Biden in the White House.”

• Biden tries to quell anxieties. Mr. Biden gave an energetic speech at an afternoon rally in Raleigh, N.C., as he sought to dispel widespread panic among Democrats about his debate performance. “I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious,” Mr. Biden told the enthusiastic crowd. “But I know what I know. I know how to tell the truth. I know how to do this job.” Later Friday, Mr. Biden arrived in New York for more events, including an appearance at the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan’s West Village.

• Can Democrats replace Biden? Even as Democratic leaders pledged confidence in Mr. Biden on Friday, pundits and political strategists openly expressed doubt in his ability to see the election through, in some cases calling for him to make way for a new nominee. Indeed, the only way for Democrats to replace Mr. Biden is for him to step aside and surrender the delegates pledged to him. At this point in the race, his replacement would be decided on the floor of the Democratic National Convention in August.

• Trump’s own debate performance: attacks and falsehoods. The format of Thursday night’s debate, in which candidates were blocked from interrupting each other and not subjected to fact-checking, appeared to serve Mr. Trump, who seemed content to sit back and let Mr. Biden struggle. When he spoke, he delivered relentless attacks, wild accusations riddled with falsehoods, portraying a nation under violent siege from undocumented immigrants — a claim unsupported by broader crime statistics — as well as grandiose exaggerations about his accomplishments.

• How many people watched? The numbers are in: 51.3 million Americans watched last night’s Biden-Trump debate live on TV. And that figure doesn’t even include millions more who likely followed along on digital sites and social media. The summertime audience was down 30 percent from the first presidential debate in 2020. But the debate, hosted by CNN, was still the most-watched television broadcast of 2024, outside of sporting events.

• Trump celebrates a critical Supreme Court ruling. In addition to the debate buoying his spirits, Mr. Trump hailed a the Supreme Court ruling on Friday that held prosecutors had overstepped in their use of an obstruction charge against a member of mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Mr. Trump, whose own case could be affected by the ruling, called it “a big win” in a post online. Get full coverage of the ruling here.

Michael M. Grynbaum contributed reporting.

Downballot Republicans seize on Biden’s halting debate performance.

Now Republicans are sensing an opening with voters by questioning how Democrats could stand behind a president whose halting and raspy performance on Thursday reignited questions about his age and acuity.

David McCormick, the Republican businessman trying to oust Senator Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, called out Mr. Casey’s support for Mr. Biden in a post on X.

“Bob Casey has said over and over that his ‘close friend’ Joe Biden, with whom he votes 98 percent of the time, is fit to be president,” Mr. McCormick wrote. “What we all saw last night proves Casey is lying.”

In Arizona, where the Trump acolyte Kari Lake is trying to stop Representative Ruben Gallego from picking up the seat held by Kyrsten Sinema, the Democrat turned independent who is not seeking re-election, Ms. Lake has tried repeatedly to compare Mr. Gallego to Mr. Biden. She has derided him as Mr. Biden’s “mini-me” and has said he is essentially the same as Mr. Biden, but 40 years younger.

A senior adviser to Ms. Lake’s campaign, who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal data, said the campaign had found that the closer it tied Mr. Gallego to Mr. Biden, the more skeptical independent voters grew of Mr. Gallego.

“Last night, the entire nation witnessed how unfit Joe Biden is,” Ms. Lake said in a statement. “As more voters discover that Ruben is nothing more than an extension of Joe, they will join our movement.”

Sam Brown, an Army veteran and Republican who is trailing Senator Jacky Rosen in polls of Nevada even as Mr. Trump is leading Mr. Biden there, wrote that during the debate, “Nevadans saw with their own eyes what a Joe Biden/Jacky Rosen ticket will look like in November, and it is disastrous.”

The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which works to elect Republicans to the Senate, hammered Senator Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat, for standing by Mr. Biden after initially being slow to do so.

“Tammy Baldwin is playing cleanup after dodging the president’s disturbing performance in last night’s debate,” said Tate Mitchell, a spokesman for the N.R.S.C. “The debate only sowed more doubt in his ability as president. Why can’t Tammy Baldwin admit that?”

Friday afternoon, the group released a video featuring clips of several Democrats voicing their support for the president. “Democrats 2024: Don’t believe your lying eyes,” it was captioned.

On the other side of the aisle, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee downplayed the debate. “Senate campaigns are candidate vs. candidate battles, and Republicans have a roster of deeply flawed recruits,” David Bergstein, a D.S.C.C. spokesman, said in a statement.

Jeremy Hughes, a Republican strategist who works on Nevada races, said Republicans needed to keep working hard to overcome their Democratic opponents. They “must resist the urge to dance on Biden’s political grave,” he said. “They shouldn’t be measuring the drapes.”

“Of course” Mr. Biden is a drag on down-ballot Democrats, he said. Republicans should “pray that Joe Biden is so self-absorbed and narcissistic that he stays in the race,” Mr. Hughes said.

Privately, a handful of Democratic strategists across swing states expressed alarm about Mr. Biden’s performance and how it might weigh on their candidates’ chances. But some hoped that with campaigns and voters having long considered his age, the debate would not greatly affect down-ballot races.

Conor O’Callaghan, one of the Democratic front-runners vying to challenge Representative David Schweikert, a Republican, in a competitive Arizona House district, said he would stand by the president. But securing a Democratic majority in Congress is now even more vital, he said.

“That’s the only way we’ll be able to support President Biden’s agenda” Mr. O’Callaghan said. “And God forbid Trump wins, we will need a Dem-controlled Congress to keep him and Project 2025 in check.”

Others privately admitted to deep consternation. The worries were particularly acute in Montana, a deeply red state where Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat, has been navigating how to take credit for the Biden administration’s accomplishments while keeping the president himself at arm’s length.

A Democratic strategist in Montana who insisted on anonymity in order to discuss private conversations said that a dozen of the state’s Democrats had expressed fear that Republicans could use Mr. Biden’s stumbles to nationalize the race in a way that could damage Mr. Tester, who has survived past elections by leaning on his local roots.

Mr. Sheehy is aiming to do just that.

“After Joe Biden’s abysmal debate performance tonight, remember this, Montana — Jon Tester loves Joe Biden,” Mr. Sheehy posted on X. “Tester thinks Biden is ‘100 percent with it’ and votes with Biden 95 percent of the time!!”

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Trump’s use of ‘Palestinian’ as an insult raises alarms for some.

Mr. Biden — a staunch supporter of Israel throughout the war who has frequently called on Israel to limit civilian casualties — offered little in the way of a response.

At a rally in Virginia on Friday afternoon, Mr. Trump again used the word “Palestinian” in trying to demean a Democratic opponent, this time directing his comments at the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer.

“Look at a guy like Senator Schumer,” he said. “He’s become a Palestinian. He’s a Palestinian. Congratulations. He was very loyal to Israel and to Jewish people. He’s Jewish. But he’s become a Palestinian because they have a couple of more votes or something. Nobody’s quite figured it out.”

Mr. Trump’s use of the word “Palestinian” as a slight, and Mr. Biden’s lack of response during Thursday’s debate, raised alarm bells for some Palestinians, Arab Americans and other opponents of Israel’s war in Gaza, which has so far killed more than 37,000 people, according to local health authorities, and destroyed much of the territory’s civilian infrastructure.

“The fact that he called President Biden a Palestinian, a bad Palestinian, was an insult to me,” Mosab Abu Toha, a poet from Gaza, wrote on social media.

Mr. Abu Toha, whose work has appeared in The New Yorker and whose book “Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear” was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2022, fled with his family to Egypt last year after a fraught struggle to leave Gaza. He posted on Friday that they had arrived in the United States.

“I woke up today still feeling the insult from yesterday’s ‘debate.’” Mr. Abu Toha wrote. “The racism and warmongering make my flesh creep.”

Lorraine Ali, a news and cultural critic at The Los Angeles Times, said on Friday that Mr. Biden’s “ineffectual or totally absent responses also allowed racist remarks from his opponent to go unchallenged.”

“The casual racism against Arabs and more specifically, Palestinians, was one of many moments that went unchallenged in a poorly designed debate that allowed for misdirection to stand as truth,” she wrote.

She compared the exchange, unfavorably, to a high-profile incident during the 2008 presidential campaign, when Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee, gently pushed back on a supporter who said she did not trust Barack Obama because he was “an Arab.” In response, Mr. McCain told the supporter: “No, ma’am. He’s a decent family man.”

“Not a great answer,” Ms. Ali wrote, “but enlightened in comparison to today’s G.O.P.”

Mr. Biden’s efforts to pressure Israel to minimize civilian casualties have frustrated Israel’s supporters and the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while doing little to quell the fury of the war’s opponents, who resent the U.S. government for providing Israel with some of the arms that it uses in Gaza.

Mr. Trump was a strong supporter of Israel as president and was close to Mr. Netanyahu. During his term, he moved the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, fulfilling a long-desired Israeli goal.

But soon after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks, which started the war in Gaza, Mr. Trump publicly attributed the invasion to Mr. Netanyahu’s lack of preparation and praised the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah as “very smart.”

Since then, he has said little about the divisive, bloody war beyond using it to attack Mr. Biden.

Rebecca Davis O’Brien contributed reporting.

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Tyler said Biden “didn’t have the best night on the debate stage,” but added, "You’d rather have one bad night than a candidate with a bad vision” for the country.

First the debate, then a Supreme Court ruling: Trump’s big 24 hours.

The high court ruled that prosecutors had overstepped in their use of an obstruction law to charge a rioter who had stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The decision could have sweeping consequences for hundreds of defendants charged with crimes that day. Of course, the most prominent person indicted partly on an obstruction charge is Mr. Trump himself, though his case could continue even after the narrowing of the law.

“BIG WIN!” Mr. Trump posted on his social media site, Truth Social, after the court ruling.

The one-two burst of successes reinvigorated Mr. Trump’s campaign almost exactly one month after he became the first major party nominee ever convicted of a felony. Mr. Trump was headed on Friday to a campaign event in Virginia, a state that has not chosen a Republican president for two decades but that Trump advisers now claim could be on the battleground map in 2024.

Mr. Biden was campaigning in North Carolina, trying to put a state in play that Democrats haven’t won since 2008.

On Thursday night, Mr. Trump sought to minimize the seriousness of the Jan. 6 attack and parry away questions about his role in the violent riot at the Capitol. He also defended Jan. 6 defendants, suggesting that some of them had been wrongly charged, a position the conservative-dominated Supreme Court appeared to affirm.

“What they’ve done to some people that are so innocent, you ought to be ashamed of yourself,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Biden at the debate. “What you have done, how you’ve destroyed the lives of so many people.”

Mr. Trump tried to turn around the ugly and deadly events that transpired, remarking on the “great border,” “lowest taxes” and “lowest regulations” that day.

“On Jan. 6, we were respected all over the world,” Mr. Trump claimed.

The Supreme Court is expected to issue its final rulings of the current session on Monday, when a decision is likely on Mr. Trump’s claim that he is immune from prosecution on charges that he plotted to subvert the 2020 election.

Of course, the calendar is not all good for Mr. Trump. He is scheduled to be sentenced after his conviction in New York of falsifying records to cover up a hush-money payment made to a p*rn star. He will be sentenced on July 11.

Mr. Biden, for his part, sought to turn the page on a shaky debate performance that he hoped would be quickly forgotten.

“I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious,” Mr. Biden said onstage at a rally in North Carolina. “I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to.”

Perhaps the best news of the day for Mr. Biden came when Nielsen released its ratings. While the debate was on track to be the most-watched telecast of the year outside of sports, with roughly 50 million viewers, it was about two-thirds of the viewership for the first debate in 2020.

“Did he have a bit of a slow start? You heard from the vice president last night, yes. But as the time went on, he certainly” made up for it, Jean-Pierre added.

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Biden’s ‘hard night’ at the debate surprises voters who had high expectations.

He saw things differently on Friday morning, after Mr. Biden’s shaky, halting performance on Thursday.

“Unfortunately, I think President Biden had a hard night,” Mr. Bergstein said Friday morning. “His communication fell down.” The president did not perform as Mr. Bergstein had expected, a flawed showing that Mr. Bergstein attributed to Mr. Biden having a cold and the president’s well-known battle to overcome a stutter. He wished Mr. Biden were younger, he said, if only to assuage other voters’ concerns about the president’s age.

But there was no doubt Mr. Bergstein would still vote for Mr. Biden. “I don’t think it’s any reflection really on his brain or his abilities,” he said. “I think it’s a communication issue.”

Melinda Cassetta, 58, a Democrat who lives in Clarksville, Md., also said Mr. Biden’s performance disappointed her. But she worried that a flood of criticism of Mr. Biden after the debate could risk obscuring Mr. Trump’s more alarming behavior.

“They will criticize Biden, his performance, and that will overshadow all the lies that Trump said,” she said. “How many times did Tapper ask him the same question? And he still didn’t answer,” Ms. Cassetta added, referring to CNN anchor Jake Tapper’s questions to Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump’s debate performance was rife with falsehoods and misrepresentations. (Read The Times’s fact-check of the event here.)

Ms. Cassetta said she thought it was too late for Democrats to nominate an alternative to Mr. Biden. She also worries that finding a candidate capable of maintaining the support that Mr. Biden has amassed would be too difficult. “Who else could they put in his spot right now to help him?” she said. “Think about it. I have no clue.”

Ms. Cassetta said she had felt her mood slip as she watched the debate with her family. “You know how you start something out really excited? But then your mood’s like, ‘Oh god, please get the words out.’” she said. “I just wanted something better.”

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On immigration, Biden offers a muted, muddled message.

“We are living right now in a rat’s nest,” Mr. Trump said. “They’re killing our people in New York, in California, in every state in the union because we don’t have borders anymore.” It was one of many statements by Mr. Trump that were either false, lacked context or were vague enough to be misleading.

Mr. Biden, meanwhile, did not define any broader strategy on an issue that has become one of his party’s most nagging political vulnerabilities. He also did not counter what many historians see as rhetoric about immigrants that could fuel violence.

The president’s most forceful defense of undocumented immigrants came more than an hour into the debate, when he suggested that they were a “reason why we had the most successful economy in the world.”

The portion of the debate dedicated to immigration was brief, but Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden pivoted to the issue repeatedly.

Ten minutes into the first topic of discussion — the economy — Mr. Trump argued that the only jobs Mr. Biden had “created are for illegal immigrants.” A few minutes later, on the issue of abortion, Mr. Biden appeared to try to make a point about how Mr. Trump pays attention to the murders of young women by immigrants, but not women killed by stringent abortion restrictions. But he mangled his delivery. Mr. Trump, in response, decried the “many young women murdered by the same people he allows to come across our border.”

Some contrasts inevitably emerged. Mr. Biden, however muddled his responses, sought to highlight his efforts to increase the number of asylum officers and attempt to pass bipartisan legislation to boost funding for border security. He promoted his success in reducing migration numbers in recent months.

Mr. Trump argued that the border had never been safer than it was under his watch. He said, without offering evidence, that migrants are taking up residence in “luxury hotels” while veterans remain on the street and that migrants are taking jobs away from Black and Latino Americans and overburdening services, like Medicare and Social Security. He conflated, as he often does, immigrants and criminals, though broader statistics have not supported that immigration fuels violent crime. He also dodged a question about whether his plans for mass deportations would ensnare every undocumented immigrant, including those who have jobs, are married to citizens or have been here for decades.

Some Democrats and Latino and immigrant-rights leaders — who had hoped Mr. Biden would deliver a message rooted in toughness and compassion, in line with his most recent executive actions — saw the performance as a missed opportunity.

They believed the candidates would articulate two starkly different visions on the issue, but found it to be more of the same. Democrats have grappled with how to talk about the thorny subject, when they talk about it all, while Republicans have often filled that vacuum with fear, anger, resentment and prejudice, they said.

Pablo Alvarado, who fled war-torn El Salvador and became a U.S. citizen and activist, said he felt that both candidates were weak. Mr. Trump was scapegoating people with the least power in American society, he said, and Mr. Biden had failed to defend them.

“As an immigrant, the feeling that I get is that we are on our own,” said Mr. Alvarado, co-executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, a labor organization based in Los Angeles. “We are going to have to organize. We are going to have to protect ourselves.”

Simon​​​​ Hankinson, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, rejected characterizations that Mr. Trump’s rhetoric was dangerous, saying Mr. Trump had only been referring to a subset of the immigrant population who had entered the country illegally.

“It is a pretty difficult ask of Biden to push back on negative characterizations of illegal immigrants when we have a laundry list of cases of young girls who have been killed by men who were deliberately released or paroled by the Biden administration,” he said.

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‘It was painful’: Biden supporters react to the debate with anxiety and alarm

Karen Erler, 75, Baltimore

“I was extremely disappointed in Biden’s lack of apparent coherence and his stumbling and stuttering.”

Ms. Erler added that Mr. Trump had appeared coherent in comparison. “Of course, Trump, every time he opened his mouth it was a lie,” she said. “But he seemed really strong!” And while she wished that the Mr. Biden had decided not to run again, she would vote for him anyway.

Bishop Wayne Crozier, 64, Charleston, W.Va.

“I do not see any scenario where he stays in the race, that the Democrats can win.”

Mr. Crozier said that he worried about the ages of both candidates but was hesitant to vote for a third party. He added that the people in his social circle had not expressed too many misgivings about Mr. Biden. “My African American friends, associates — the majority of them are so anti-Trump,” he said.

Joni Novotnak, 67, Fogelsville, Pa.

“He’s worked so hard. I don’t want to turn around and say, ‘He’s done.’”

Ms. Novotnak, a former Republican, said she felt “despondent” during the debate. But on Friday morning, she woke up feeling hopeful. She said Mr. Biden had accomplished a lot during his first term and should not step aside just yet. “Trump’s party right now is just so far off how mainstream America is and feels,” she added.

Lynn Williams, 67, Santa Monica, Calif.

“There’s sort of a vacant look in his eyes.”

Ms. Williams said she believes in the Democratic Party platform and that it would be impossible for her to vote for Mr. Trump. Still, she added, Mr. Biden’s performance on Thursday was hard to watch. “It’s just concerning, you know?”

Diane Sturnick, 64, Westmoreland County, Pa.

“My friends this morning were saying, ‘Joe’s gotta go.’ But who?”

Ms. Sturnick still insisted that Mr. Biden was up for the job, even if he looked terrible. “I wish they had given him a hot toddy, a little honey and lemon — a little shot of whiskey would have been great.”

Donald Wilhite, 33, Hyattsville, Md.

“When they started arguing about their golf scores, it gave me major worries about their maturity.”

Mr. Wilhite said that neither candidate had spent enough time talking about issues that were important to him, like the economy, the war in Gaza, women’s health and the environment. He added that he was not overly concerned about Mr. Biden’s verbal stumbles. “He’s had similar performances before,” Mr. Wilhite said, “and it hasn’t caused him to back out.”

Lauren Makholm, 35, Chicago

“It was painful.”

Ms. Makholm said that it didn’t seem possible to replace Mr. Biden as the Democratic nominee and that she would vote for him reluctantly. “I don’t know any undecided voters,” she added. “I know a lot of people who are mad at Biden for his handling of Gaza and inflation, but in the end they will probably vote for him.”

Mikayla Cruickshank, 29, Lincoln, Neb.

“He is in no shape to run for president again.”

Ms. Cruickshank, a lifelong Democrat, spoke with her co-workers on Friday morning about how sickly and fragile Mr. Biden had looked during the debate. “It makes me really second guess me voting for him,” she said. “I would never vote for Trump, but I’m now considering voting third-party.”

Martin Focazio, 59, Bucks County, Pa.

“I’m still voting for Biden if that’s the only choice, but this is like whether I’m eating a frog from the head first or the tail first.”

Mr. Focazio said he was “devastated” and “distraught" by the president’s performance. “Five minutes into it, my wife and I were hands on head, going, ‘Oh no, oh no. This is really bad. It can’t get worse.’ And it did get worse.”

Theresa Flandrich, 66, San Francisco

“I texted a friend and said, ‘This is really scary.’”

Ms. Flandrich was appalled by Mr. Trump’s comments about immigrants. “Oh, my God, what if, what if he wins?” she said. “I can’t go through another four years of Donald Trump.”

Carmen Carter, 68, Detroit

“At this point, in no way should we negate what he’s able to do, especially since his opponent is mentally unstable across the board.”

Ms. Carter, a retired publicist, said some of Mr. Biden’s troubles during the debate could be attributed to Mr. Trump’s attacks. “It’s difficult to express yourself while you’re defending yourself,” said Carter. “Trump didn’t really answer the questions.”

Reporting was done by Jacey Fortin, Campbell Robertson, Oralandar Brand-Williams, Robert Chiarito,Lauryn Higgins, Jon Hurdle, Clyde McGrady, Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez, Peder Schaefer, Jonathan Wolfe and Kate Zernike.

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‘I know I’m not a young man’: Biden confronts doubters during forceful rally.

“I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious,” he said, setting off roars of approval in the fairgrounds hanger and chants of “Joe! Joe!” from the crowd. “I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong.”

Delivering his remarks from a Teleprompter, and freed from rules that required him to hold his own, without notes, for 90 minutes, the president appeared to find the energy and clarity that had eluded him in the Atlanta debate.

With the stakes sky high as Democrats around the country openly discussed whether he should abandon his bid for a second term, Mr. Biden repeatedly cast the election as a choice between right and wrong, morality and criminality, an honest man and a convicted criminal.

But the event, planned before the debate, also conveyed a sense of political desperation. The president and his supporters knew he needed to rebound quickly from the damage the debate had done to his campaign. Mr. Biden vowed to do what he has done in the face of decades of personal and political crises.

“I know what millions of Americans know,” he said, raising his voice and clenching his fist. “When you get knocked down, you get back up.”

Mr. Biden largely ignored the party anxiety swirling around him and did not mention the calls by some high-profile Democrats that he consider stepping aside — the kind of breach that is almost unheard-of this close to a major party’s nominating convention.

Instead, Mr. Biden kicked off what aides described as a messaging blitz aimed at repairing the obvious political damage less than five months from Election Day. Vice President Kamala Harris had a rally planned in Las Vegas and a flurry of campaign surrogates were sent to the closest television cameras available armed with talking points about Mr. Trump.

By the early afternoon, Mr. Biden’s best surrogate, former President Barack Obama, had weighed in with a social media post aimed at calming Democrats down.

“Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know,” Mr. Obama wrote on X, referring to his widely panned first debate in 2012 against Sen. Mitt Romney. “But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself. Between someone who tells the truth; who knows right from wrong and will give it to the American people straight — and someone who lies through his teeth for his own benefit.”

The campaign event Friday was unlike most of Mr. Biden’s recent stops on the trail. His supporters waved signs and cheered “Let’s go, Joe,” as local politicians rallied the crowd, asking those present to “get noisy” for rappers E40 and Fat Joe.

The president’s debate performance was not mentioned at all by any of his warm-up acts except for his wife, Jill, who said only that “what you saw on the debate stage last night was Joe Biden, a president with integrity and character.”

Douglas Dib, 71, a Democratic volunteer in Wake County, North Carolina’s most populated county, which includes Raleigh, the capital, said he left the rally on Friday wishing the President Biden who had taken the stage there would have shown up on Thursday night.

“When I came here today, I was hoping I’d see what I saw,” Mr. Dib said. “And what I saw is a man who understood what happened last night and this is the beginning of him speaking very directly to the American people from the heart. He’s on his way back.”

But some in the crowd seemed more resigned than enthusiastic, describing themselves as disappointed with Mr. Biden’s shaky delivery during the debate and doubtful of other options that may be possible at this late hour.

“His age has concerned me from the very beginning,” said Amanda Robertson, a Democratic candidate for a county commission seat in North Carolina who attended Mr. Biden’s rally. “I mean, it’s concerned a lot of Americans. I know that. And certainly, watching him last night, his age showed. And that’s hard.”

Ms. Robertson said she supported the president and admired his policies but was worried about how he might be perceived after his debate performance on Thursday. She said it is too late to find a different candidate.

“I think that they need to get behind the candidate that they chose. That all of us chose,” she said. “Certainly, six months ago, I would’ve said, ‘Hey, let’s look around and see if we’ve got a younger candidate.’”

Inside the campaign bubble in North Carolina, Mr. Biden’s advisers and many of those cheering in the crowd seemed disconnected from the panic among Democrats.

The president’s aides churned out optimistic election data points and said the campaign had raised $14 million on Thursday, including what they claimed was a big jump in grass roots donations in the hour or two after the debate. They cited internal polling data, which they did not share, that showed voters had disliked Mr. Trump’s aggressive temperament. In a memo released early Friday morning, they focused on Mr. Trump.

“In a survey of undecided voters in a Midwest state, debate watchers agreed that President Biden won the debate, and the more they saw of Donald Trump’s erratic and vindictive behavior, the more they remembered why they voted against him in 2020,” wrote Becca Siegel and Meg Schwenzfeier, who lead the campaign’s data analytics efforts.

The glass-half-full approach was a striking contrast to the agonizing taking place in just about every other corner of the Democratic Party.

Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic House speaker, said that “from a performance standpoint it wasn’t great.” Nadia B. Ahmad, a member of the Democratic National Committee from Florida, urged Mr. Biden to drop out, calling it “painfully clear that Biden cannot win in November.” Julián Castro, a former cabinet secretary, called the night a “cascade of mistakes.” And the Rev. Al Sharpton said, “Biden did not rise to the occasion.”

Still, some of Mr. Biden’s hard-core supporters were undaunted by his debate performance. Megan Thacker, a 38-year-old middle school teacher, compared Mr. Biden’s performance to the standardized tests she administers to her students every year.

“It’s one time. This was one debate,” she said. “Let’s talk about the overall four years for both candidates. It doesn’t give me any pause or concern whatsoever for this administration.”

She hoped Mr. Biden would show “a sense of security, a sense of hope, some strength” in his remarks. Ms. Porter added: “I think you have to look at the past four years versus just 90 minutes.”

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Leading Democrats vouch for Biden, but concede he had a ‘bad night.’

When asked if he could vouch for the president, Mr. Khanna only said, “I can vouch for our policies.”

Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California and a former House speaker, acknowledged that “from a performance standpoint, it wasn’t great.” But, she added, “from a values standpoint, it far outshone the other guy.” Ms. Pelosi, a longtime booster of Mr. Biden’s candidacy, said that she did not think Mr. Biden should step aside as the party’s presidential nominee and that she did not know of anyone pushing him to do so.

“I’m not doing it, and I don’t know anyone who’s doing it,” she said.

Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the House minority leader, also said that he did not think Mr. Biden should step aside, despite the increased concerns about his age and his ability to do the job.

Still, Democrats said they were concerned, not only about the White House but also about their prospects of winning back control of the House of Representatives and keeping control of the Senate. On Friday morning, many Democrats were speed-walking into the House chamber to avoid questions from reporters.

Representative Jasmine Crockett, the Texas Democrat who worked the spin room in Atlanta after the debate, refused to answer questions from reporters in the Capitol, while Representative Adriano Espaillat, Democrat of New York, offered a terse “no comment” when asked about his reaction to Mr. Biden’s debate performance.

Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina and a key Biden ally who helped him secure the nomination in 2020, swiftly jogged into the chamber; later, when cornered, Mr. Clyburn told reporters: “That was Strike 1. You always get three strikes.” He said that he planned to connect with the president later in the day, and that his message to Mr. Biden would be, “Stay the course.”

Republicans, who had suggested that Mr. Biden would take performance-enhancing drugs before the debate, switched to a posture of sadness for the state of the country under a visibly aged leader. On the other hand, many Democrats tried to change the focus to Mr. Trump’s geyser of lies and venality.

“I am looking forward to a conversation about Donald Trump,” Representative Veronica Escobar, Democrat of Texas, said. “When he talks about countries emptying out their asylums and their prisons and he’s describing immigrants that way, that is beyond vile.”

Representative Pramila Jayapal, Democrat of Washington and the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Mr. Trump “wants to destroy our democracy and be a dictator on Day 1, and we’re all focusing on whether Biden had a cold.”

And Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, said that his own disastrous debate performance during his 2020 Senate campaign, when he was still in the early stages of recovery after a life-threatening stroke and struggled to talk coherently, made him empathetic and optimistic about Mr. Biden’s ability to overcome one bad night.

“Just the way everyone was so quickly to panic and pile on, my heart really went out,” he said in an interview. “A rough debate is not the sum total of the kind of person you are, the kind of candidate you are and the record that you have.”

Still, some pressed the White House to do more to address the president’s inability to communicate a clear re-election message. Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said that was “a huge problem” that Biden officials needed to address.

Mr. Biden, 81, trailed Mr. Trump, 78, in many swing state polls going into the debate, and Democrats had been bullish about a chance to show Mr. Biden as something other than the frail and diminished caricature that Republicans have tried to paint. On Friday, some were still simply in shock.

“I’m still processing what happened last night,” said Representative Angie Craig, Democrat of Minnesota. “It was a terrible debate, we all have to acknowledge that.”

Catie Edmondson and Jennifer Medina contributed reporting.

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Outside ‘Jittery Joe’s,’ the Biden campaign pushes donors for calm.

As a cacophony of Democrats worried that Thursday’s debate was a cataclysmic event that threatened the 2024 campaign — and prominent Democrats publicly counseled the president to consider stepping aside — the lobby of the Ritz Carlton in Atlanta was a bubble of relative optimism.

“The feeling inside the room was unbothered,” said Telley Madina, a Democratic strategist who attended the Biden donor gathering.

Members of Mr. Biden’s national finance team, who were given white T-shirts that read “Let’s go Joe,” did not deny that Mr. Biden stumbled on Thursday. But they tried to mostly squint past it.

“I’m fine. I’m happy,” said Trudi Loh, a donor who was at the meeting. “I’m waiting for everyone else to calm down.”

Jon Greenwald, a Biden fund-raiser who was in attendance, reflected that “the need is for us all to work even harder.”

Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Mr. Biden’s campaign manager, declined to comment as she left the breakfast briefing, other than to say the campaign had an “incredible partnership” with their fund-raising team.

Chip Forrester, who attended the meeting, acknowledged that “it was not the best performance, we certainly recognize that.” He added, however, that “the incredible news though is our grass roots online fund-raising.”

Soon after the breakfast, the campaign announced it had raised $14 million by the morning after the debate.

Mr. Greenwald said that, as a fellow 81-year-old, he brought a unique perspective to the age debate.

“Being 81, it’s perhaps not surprising that I would say I’m convinced that is not disqualifying,” he said, pausing for a moment. “And I’m two months younger anyway.”

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