Despite mounting pressure from the Democrats to consider his political future after a car-crash debate performance, Joe Biden seems to be staying firmly in the race with Jill Biden stubbornly standing by his side.
And her actions over the past 48 hours are clear that she is the one firmly pulling the strings over her husband’s decision to stay in the race.
She made it clear when she spoke to wealthy donors in New York on Friday night she knew how the debate was perceived but said she told her husband the campaign would continue.
“So let’s talk about last night’s debate, because I know it’s on your minds.” she said. “As Joe said earlier today, he’s not a young man. And you know, after last night’s debate, he said, ‘You know, Jill, I don’t know what happened. I didn’t feel that great.’ And I said, ‘Look, Joe, we are not going to let 90 minutes define the four years that you’ve been president.'”
The CNN performance where Joe Biden meandered through answers and lost his train of thought sparked an unprecedented panic in the party.
Top lawmakers and operatives were immediately considering their options.
But when Biden attended a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Friday, he seemed like a different man. Jill Biden called it an ‘amazing’ event.
During it, he admitted his debate performance wasn’t ideal, but insisted he is staying put in the race. The crowed of more than 2,000 cheered him on.
His defiant announcement came alongside the one person likely standing between him and a potentially historic decision to step aside: His wife Jill.
Even though she knows he had a bad night at the first presidential debate, she is standing stubbornly at her husband’s side and fighting back against the fears he will lose November’s contest to Donald Trump.
The Bidens know ‘he didn’t have the best first debate,’ a source close to her told DailyMail.com. ‘Is he the best person to be president, now and for the next four years? 100% yes.’
‘She’s his wife of 47 years; she is his biggest supporter, biggest champion, and biggest believer.’
President Biden, 81, has the nomination locked up. The only way for the party to have a different nominee is for him to voluntarily exit the race.
And the one person who can get him to do that is Jill Biden. It was only after her blessing he agreed to run for a second term. She is his closest adviser and the person he listens to the most.
But Jill Biden is no where near the conclusion that her husband needs to exit the race. She said it herself at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, the day after the debate.
Wearing a dress repeatedly emblazed with the word ‘vote,’ she told the crowd: ‘We don’t choose our chapter in history, but we can choose who leads us through it. And at this moment with these perils the world is facing, there is no one that I would rather have sitting in the Oval Office right now than my husband.’
And, in the aftermath of the debate, she praised Joe Biden lavishly even as many Democrats were banging their heads’ about his fumbling debate performance.
‘Joe, you did such a great job answering every question. You knew all the facts,’ she told him at a gathering with supporters.
Many called her out of touch with the night’s events. What her words showed, however, was the weight she carries with the president. She is the one Joe Biden turns to reassurance. She is the one that can act as a balm to his wounded pride.
It is now a question of what she will do next.
Jill Biden has intervened before when she thought Joe Biden wasn’t being served well by his advisers. After his first disastrous press conference, she walked into a staff meeting and demanded to know who was responsible for the event and why it wasn’t put to a stop.
At his next press conference, she sat in a chair front and center, taking charge.
The question is what will she do now: Will she push for changes at the campaign? Will she call for staff to be fired? Will she put Joe Biden in public more? Or will she urge the White House to continue to use stage-managed events and keep him surrounded by aides?
The full fallout in the Biden inner sanctum remains to be seen but Jill Biden will front and center of what comes next.
She will likely emerge from this with more power than ever in the White House. She is the one who sees Joe Biden the most, even in the most private moments. She is the one who truly knows his health and mental state.
She is the one who has defended him when his age is questioned.
‘I know what’s on your mind so let’s talk about age this election,’ Jill Biden told a fundraiser in Philadelphia on Monday night. ‘This election’s not about age. Joe and the other guy are about the same age. This election is about character wisdom and ability.’
Additionally, she is the one who often steps in at his events – to take him by the arm and guide him back on track when he fumbles. And that role played out in real time at the debate when a video of her helping the president down the stage stairs at the end of the event went viral.
And, as the true extent of Biden’s fumbling was revealed in real time during last night’s debate, Jill Biden’s loyalty is being questioned – not just by Republicans, who have called her the president’s handler, but by Democrats who are Biden supporters.
‘I think I should start by saying, without any apologies, that I love Joe Biden and Jill,’ MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said the morning after the disastrous debate.
He added that it was time to question whether Biden should stay on the ticket: ‘If, however, you believe, as do I, and as do so many people who watch this program, and who fear just how dark of a place a second Donald Trump term will take America, then I think it is critical that we ask the same questions about this man I love, respect, and whose — whose public service in saving this country from Donald Trump over the last three and a half years I honor and always will.’
Those who know her argue the fallout from the debate will cause her to double down on Team Biden.
‘Our First Lady is a fighter and she’s a competitor. She, and the Biden Family, have been here before … when his political obituary was being written and he was down and counted out. The collective reaction to the debate tonight will only reinforce their grit and determination — they will double down on running. Whether that’s a good or bad thing is up for debate. That’s just who they are — they don’t give up. Do not expect anything to change in this race,’ wrote her former press secretary Michael LaRosa on X.
Jill Biden has always been the rock of the Biden family.
She demonstrated that during its most trying week since Beau Biden died in 2015: the week her stepson Hunter was on trial while her husband was on a state visit to France, requiring her to balance her private and public roles.
Hunter Biden’s trial for federal gun charges exposed the family’s darkest secrets: his voice rang through the courtroom as prosecutors used his own audio book to play out scenes of his drug use, his ex-wife discussed finding his drug paraphernalia, and his brother’s widow described how he got her addicted to crack cocaine.
Jill Biden was there, accused of wasting taxpayer money for her four flights back-and-forth across the Atlantic that week for a personal family matter, so she could be there for her son while also performing her first lady duties in France.
The White House noted she loves her son, and, like any mother, wants to be there for him. And that she sent him strength from her front row seat.
‘I have not seen her find strength like she found that week in a remarkably long time. I mean, really since around the 2015 period when Beau was dying or after he died, that she was having to get back up,’ a senior White House official told DailyMail.com of that time period.
‘There’s a steel in her, right? Where she’s just like: let’s just do this.’
That steel, however, could become rigid, a determination to keep Joe Biden in the White House simply to defy his critics.
Some describe her motives for wanting to stay in the White House as a play for power and ‘revenge.’
‘She likes power. She wants to stay. She wants some sense of revenge,’ historian David Brinkley told CBS’ Face the Nation in February.
But the White House notes the first lady has her own agenda for a second term: expanded pre-K schooling, more funding for community college, abortion rights restored, and women’s health getting a greater priority.
And they argue her biggest priority is the defeat of Donald Trump.
Jill Biden, along with the president, is a fervent believer that Trump will destroy democracy: ‘Trump has told us again and again why he wants the White House. To give himself absolute power. To not be held accountable for his criminal actions,’ she said in Los Angeles earlier this month. ‘To destroy the democratic safeguards that stand in his way.’
Democrats, however, are now questioning if Joe Biden can beat Donald Trump.
The former president was leading Biden in key battleground states ahead of the debate. The fear is Trump’s poll numbers will go up.
David Axelrod, the former Obama senior adviser, said Biden’s performance sent shockwaves through the party.
‘I think there was a sense of shock actually how he came out at the beginning of the debate, how his voice sounded, he seemed a little disoriented,’ he said on CNN.
It also remains a question of Biden’s legacy. He came in during the 2020 election to calm the country after the chaos of Trump’s presidency.
But if he loses in November, history will rewrite its view of him. And of Jill Biden.
That steel in the first lady, her loyalty to her husband of 48 years, could make her blind to that.
‘First Lady scholars know that every couple contemplates their legacy. The Bidens are no different,’ Stacy Cordery, a professor at Iowa State University and expert on first ladies, told DailyMail.com.
‘It took Joe Biden a long time to get to the White House. Even if Jill had the power in their marriage to force him to step down, I do not believe she would use it – because she loves him too much.’