Top Biden advisor says Dem party lost its mind after debate: It melted down

A top advisor to former President Joe Biden said the Democratic Party “melted down” after his poor performance in the June 2024 debate against President Donald Trump and insisted Biden should have remained the party’s candidate.Biden’s rough performance and weak voice at the CNN Presidential Debate sparked immense fear about his re-election odds, and the left’s top leaders called on him to withdraw from the race.Biden was replaced as the Democratic candidate by Vice President Kamala Harris less than a month later on July 21.She lost to Trump in the 2024 presidential election.“Now, lots of people have terrible debates,” former Biden senior advisor Mike Donilon said during a discussion at Harvard University.“Lots of people have terrible debates.

Usually, the party doesn’t lose its mind, but that’s what happened here.It melted down.”CNN and the BBC ran headlines calling the performance “disastrous” and “incoherent.”“If Joe Biden loses November’s election, history will record that it took just 10 minutes to destroy a presidency,” CNN senior reporter Stephen Collinson wrote in an article.

“It was clear a political disaster was about to unfold as soon as the 81-year-old commander in chief stiffly shuffled on stage in Atlanta.”Collinson went on to describe Biden as giving the weakest performance in televised debate history.New York Times columnist and Biden supporter Thomas Friedman wrote the debate made him “weep” and called on Biden to step aside.“I cannot remember a more heartbreaking moment in American presidential campaign politics in my lifetime — precisely because of what it revealed: Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election,” Friedman wrote.Donilon, who has known Biden for more than four decades, described the Democratic Party’s reaction as “insane.”“I think the party lost its mind,” he said.“If you ask people about this period of time, they’ll tell you Bid...