60% of voters want Biden replaced on Dem ticket as campaign staffers seek to reassure donors

Top Biden staffers were trying to convince large donors in a private meeting on Friday that the debate was not a "campaign killer," per Politico. Amid the donor meeting and aftermath of the disastrous debate performance Biden had on Thursday evening, 60 percent of voters want to swap Biden out with a different candidate, according to a Morning Consult poll.

The same poll suggested that 78 percent of those who watched the debate said that Biden is too old for the job. Despite those wide concerns from Americans, Biden's campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon told the donors that there was not going to be an easy way for Biden to be replaced by another candidate for the nomination.

The private gathering was among the first attempts to quell fears that Biden would be leaving his post as president or the nominee. Some donors felt better after the presentation and others thought that the staffers were trying to chastise them for having worries similar to the public. The backers of Biden said that the campaign admitted that the message coming from the Biden camp had to be better and sharper.

One donor who disagreed told the outlet, “They’re saying, ‘We just had one bad night.'" The donor added, “What they’re missing, a vital point they’re missing, is it’s not just one bad night… There’s no fixing this.”

Politico interviewed over a dozen different donors who were in the meeting that provided damage control to the incumbent president. Staffers from Biden's campaign who were present included O’Malley Dillon, Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez, as well as deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks. They all forcefully rejected any call for Biden to step aside and be replaced.

“I do think it’s incumbent on the campaign to acknowledge that this was a mistake—to do a debate the way they did, to do it before the convention, to do it in a format he’s not good in,” one Democratic donor said. “There have to be some repercussions, and the sooner someone in campaign leadership accepts responsibility for last night, the sooner other questions about Biden as the nominee will quiet down.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been updated to reflect that campaign staffers, not White House staffers, have sought to reassure donors after Biden's poor debate performance.