6 takeaways from Biden's high-stakes interview

Democrats have been in full panic mode about President Biden’s candidacy and ability to beat Donald Trump since Biden’s dismal debate performance last week.

In an effort to quell that concern, Biden sat for a network TV interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos Friday night.

Did it work? That will become clearer in coming days, but here are six takeaways from the interview:

1. He was better than in the debate, but Biden’s age is clearly showing. 

Biden may have calmed some nerves among some political allies with the interview, but he didn’t show the facility and coherence that Democrats would have wanted to see. His thoughts were, at times, scattered and less than clear.

“I just had a bad night,” Biden said of the debate. “I don’t know why.”

He said he had been traveling in the weeks prior, had a cold, even tested for COVID.

Will Democratic officials and, more importantly, persuadable voters buy that and believe he is up for four more years in office? Biden insists he is up to the job, but his age is clearly showing even more than it has in the past year or so — and at exactly the wrong time. Going into the debate, the bar of expectations was very low. All Biden had to do to clear it was show some energy and vigor. He didn’t do it. And now the bar has been raised. Every public appearance, speech and debate (if there even is another one) is going to be magnified.

2. Biden showed his stubbornness, for good or ill.

Biden again reiterated that he’s not getting out of the race, and even went so far as to claim that essentially no one else could do the job as well as he is doing it or be a better candidate against Trump.

Biden downplayed questions about his political standing, doubts about his ability to lead or to defeat