“Just, like, knows how to address a camera,” Leeper continued, sounding demoralized, at a park where families celebrated the July Fourth holiday with live music and a bounce house. “Can shake hands.”
As Biden prepared to visit Madison on Friday, Democrats in this blue stronghold were more apprehensive than ever about an election they are desperate to win. Many said they were worried that Biden wasn’t up to the task of defeating former president Donald Trump; others feared that replacing Biden would do more harm than good. They had grimaced through the debate last week, in which Biden delivered a halting performance and appeared repeatedly to lose his train of thought. They were concerned that a second Trump term would go further than the first, and anxious about a party caught between risky options.
“I trust Biden to make the right decision,” said Sandy Boes, 73. “I don’t know what it is, but I really believe that if he — if the people around him think he can’t do it — that he will put the good of the country first. … I’m afraid, after the debate, that a lot of people just will decide not to vote, and if people don’t vote, then I think we get Trump, and I’m terrified.”
Biden, 81, has repeatedly said he intends to stay in the race, even in the face of growing pressure in his party to step aside and conversations about replacement candidates. A week into widespread hand-wringing over Biden’s viability as a candidate, Democratic voters here still had plenty of affection and respect for the man who beat Trump in 2020.
Many of Biden’s doubters were open to the idea that the president could still reassure them, starting with an event in Madison that some were hoping to attend. Even for those who cast protest votes against Biden in the primary, it wasn’t clear that replacing him was the right move so late in the race.
But the crisis hanging over Democrats was frustrating to voters who thought that Biden should have stepped aside earlier and faced little pressure to do so from party leaders. No prominent Democrats moved to challenge Biden as he said he was committed to running again, though polls leading up to the primaries showed that most Democratic voters wanted someone else and that some felt uneasy about his age and acuity.
“There was support from constituents” for a nominee besides Biden, said Charlotte Zangs, 26, “but there wasn’t really support within the party.” What she saw was cheerleading that backfired: “They were like, ‘He can do it! He’s got it!’”
Zangs backed long-shot candidate Dean Phillips in a Democratic primary that Biden dominated, while her partner, 26-year-old Ben Nesslar, cast their ballot for “uninstructed” — a protest vote delivered with eagerness for “someone below the retirement age.”
Now, the couple feels vindicated. But Zangs said at this point, she’s not clamoring for Biden to bow out. “It’s such a complicated situation,” she said.
Nesslar felt differently. To Nesslar, the debate had demonstrated that Biden was unfit to serve, and Nesslar was ready to embrace Harris. “She can talk through a sentence,” Nesslar said.
Madison, the capital of swing-state Wisconsin, and surrounding Dane County were among the blue strongholds critical to Biden’s victory in 2020. In states like Wisconsin where races are won by the thinnest of margins, Biden and Trump are not only fighting over swing voters, but also working to energize their respective bases. Polls have consistently found that Biden is struggling with flagging support among groups that typically skew heavily Democrat, such as young people and voters of color.
Recent surveys have shown close races in swing states, often with Trump having an edge. After the debate, a New York Times-Siena poll found that Trump’s national lead over Biden had widened to six percentage points among likely voters.
On the eve of Biden’s planned visit here — part of a crucial stretch as he looks to persuade Democrats not to abandon him — many liberal voters were struggling with the same question: How to move forward?
Cynthia Carlson, 54, said she was “50-50” on the question of whether Biden should keep leading the ticket. New candidates, she said, would mean “skeletons in the closet that the Republicans would bring out” — but if Biden “stays in and he doesn’t up his game? Then that’s an issue, too.”
“Biden should have done more to set up whoever the next person is going to be,” said Chris Schickel, 61.
His partner, 43-year-old Shanna Wolf, said a new ticket would be “exciting” and called Harris “super smart.” But others worried that Harris has her own vulnerabilities in a general election.
“I’m worried about sexism. I’m worried about racism. I feel like Biden weirdly is a more viable candidate because he’s a White man, even if he’s super old,” said Ben Kasten, 39, who said he feels like he also doesn’t have a strong sense of what Harris stands for despite following political news closely.
Kasten said he considers Biden a “fantastic candidate” when it comes to his “policies and principles.” But watching the debate last week, he felt so sick he turned it off. He estimates he made it about 10 minutes as a raspy-voiced Biden struggled through.
A history teacher in the Madison area, Kasten says the stakes of the election are enormous. He and his wife have even discussed wanting to leave the country if Trump is reelected.
“The damage that he has done, the disrespect that he has shown to institutions that have shaped American life for a long time — it makes it really hard to explain to kids why that’s okay,” he said.
