“While voters consistently mention President Biden’s age when contacted, our target voters (both re-engaged and true swing voters) still plan to vote for him, making it clear that this debate has not eroded support among the voters who will decide this election,” he wrote in the memo.
“I’m not going to underestimate the state of the race. We have a lot of work to do if we’re going to win in November,” Kanninen said, but he emphasized a line Biden has repeatedly made since his poor debate performance: “I’m in this to win.”
“He is the presumptive nominee with no plans for a replacement. Joe Biden will be the official nominee within the next few weeks,” he wrote. “It’s time to stop pitting each other against each other. The only person who wins when we fight is Donald Trump.”
Biden’s advisers have privately warned Democrats in recent weeks that any potentially cumbersome mechanism for replacing Biden as the top candidate would only deepen divisions within the party. Vice President Kamala Harris would best retain the current campaign’s base, campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez told donors shortly after the debate, but the process of selecting a new nominee could be messy and complicated.
Biden is in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, to recuperate after contracting COVID-19 and has no public events scheduled.
