The 48 hours after the debate were a frenzied campaign within a campaign to save Mr. Biden’s suddenly teetering candidacy, a multiday damage-control effort to pressure and plead with anxious Democratic lawmakers, surrogates, activists and donors to stand by the president, the party’s presumptive nominee.
By Saturday, their efforts appeared to have successfully slowed the tide of prominent Democrats calling for Mr. Biden to step aside. The president, for his part, grabbed microphones at campaign events, telling supporters and deep-pocketed donors that he knew he had flubbed the debate. And he repeatedly tried to flip the focus back onto Donald J. Trump’s performance.
By Saturday evening, Ms. O’Malley Dillon wrote a memo accusing “the beltway class” of counting out Mr. Biden prematurely. “If we do see changes in polling in the coming weeks, it will not be the first time that overblown media narratives have driven temporary dips in the polls,” she wrote.
She made no mention of the more than 50 million Americans who watched Mr. Biden’s sputtering performance in real time.
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