Democrats Roll Out a Post-Debate Playbook to Help Biden Recover

Top Democrats scrambled on Sunday to defend President Biden and dismiss concerns about his candidacy that surfaced after he struggled to answer policy questions in Thursday’s debate and failed to make an aggressive case against former President Donald J. Trump.

The surge of surrogates followed a concerted effort by Mr. Biden and his team over the weekend to reassure anxious donors, party leaders and supporters who have raised questions about whether he should continue his candidacy.

“Listen, if they weren’t engaged in a little bit of hand-wringing, they wouldn’t be Democrats,” Senator Raphael Warnock, Democrat of Georgia, said on NBC News.

In interviews on several TV networks, Mr. Warnock and other Democrats offered versions of the same argument: that Mr. Biden should be judged not on his performance in a 90-minute debate but on his record as president over the past three and a half years, and that voters should give more weight to Mr. Trump’s numerous false statements in the debate and to his continued indications that he would not accept an election loss.

“I think that the president had a difficult night, just like every single one of us do,” Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland said on CBS News, adding, “Joe Biden is not going to take himself out of this race, nor should he.”

Mr. Warnock and Mr. Moore were among a string of high-profile Democrats who spoke out in a bid to bolster Mr. Biden’s position within the party, including Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina; Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the former House speaker; and Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania.