BATON ROUGE, La. — Louisiana’s Democratic leaders are still publicly throwing their weight behind President Biden’s campaign, despite moments at Thursday’s debate in which he stuttered, trailed off, and seemed to struggle to find the correct words.
“I can tell you from the Louisiana Democratic Party standpoint that we have absolute full faith in President Joe Biden,” said LDP Executive Director Drew Prestridge. Friday, he told WWL Louisiana that while he does not think “[Biden’s] performance will go down in the list of top debate performances ever,” he still presented himself as the clear choice for the job.
“Trump told lie after lie after lie on that debate stage for 90 minutes last night,” said Prestridge.
That included a point at which Trump said that if Roe v. Wade were to be reinstated, “they will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, and even after birth.”
“Those words don't even make sense,” State Representative Mandie Landry (D-New Orleans) told WWL Louisiana, “that would be murder, killing someone once they have been born.”
She expressed that while she would, overall, like to see a Democratic nominee “who can be as aggressive as we'd like them to be,” she still supports President Biden, and believes he is fully capable of serving a second term. “He knew all the policy details like the back of his hand, he's just not ever going to compete with someone as energetic as Trump,” she said.
WWL Political Analyst and Gambit columnist Clancy Dubos took a more pragmatic stance.“It's very hard to win a debate, but it's easy to lose one, and Biden lost this one,” he said Friday. But with months to go until the election, he does not believe this debate will taint Biden’s entire campaign.
“As time goes by, I think you're going to see less attention paid to Biden's performance, style-wise, and more attention paid to Donald Trump's delivery of misinformation and outright lies,” said Dubos.
The candidates will meet for their next debate in September.
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