The possibility of US President Joe Biden withdrawing his bid for re-election is not discussed and he plans to participated in the debate against Republican Donald Trump in September, the spokesman for the Biden campaign said last night, quoted by Reuters, quoted by BTA.
Meanwhile, at a campaign event last night, Biden said he intends to beat his GOP rival and also gave no sign that he was considering dropping out of the race after his lackluster performance in the debates alarmed his fellow party members.
"I know I'm not a young man to point out the obvious,", Biden said at a rally a day after a head-to-head showdown with his Republican rival in which most observers believe the 81-year-old president was defeated.
"I don't walk as easily as I used to, I don't speak as smoothly as I used to, I don't debate as well as I used to,'' he admitted as the crowd chanted 'four more years.'
"I wouldn't be running again if I didn't believe with all my heart and soul that I could do this job. The stakes are too high," Biden said.
Biden's verbal stumbles and sometimes unclear answers during the debate have fueled concerns among voters that he may not be able to serve another four-year term and have some of his fellow Democrats wondering whether they could replace with another candidate before the US election on November 5, Reuters points out.
Biden campaign spokesman Michael Tyler said there had been no discussions about that possibility. "We'd rather have one bad night than a candidate with a bad vision of where he wants to take the country," he told reporters aboard the presidential plane.
If Biden withdraws his candidacy, his party will have less than two months to choose another candidate at its national convention, which begins on August 19 - a potentially complicated process that could pit Kamala Harris, the first black a female vice president, against governors and other officials who are being touted as possible candidates, Reuters notes.
Biden's hesitant performance in the debate caused consternation in the international community, Reuters reported. It was followed by public calls for the current US president to step down and has created anticipation among some of America's closest allies for Donald Trump's return to the White House, the agency added.
Newspapers around the world are also critical, the agency points out. The French "Mond" compared Biden to a shipwreck. The left-leaning British in. "Mirror" calls his performance a "blunder-strewn nightmare". The German "Bild" came out with the headline: "Good Night Joe!", and the Australian "Sydney Morning Herald" wrote: "Trump bashed Biden. Democrats can't win with Joe".
"Joe Biden can't do it," said Matteo Renzi, an Italian centrist who was close to the US Democratic Party during his tenure as Italy's prime minister.
As for Japan and South Korea - some of the US's closest allies in Asia - relations with the Biden government have at times been strained over his demands for more money for military aid and because of tensions in trade relations, according to Reuters. Countries such as Japan and Germany began preparing for Trump's eventual return as his campaign gathered pace.
"Trump didn't win, but Biden would have collapsed," Kunihiko Miyake, a former Japanese diplomat and now director of research at the Canon Institute for International Studies think tank, told Reuters. "Unlike eight years ago, we, and other US European and Asian allies, are now much better prepared for what lies ahead. And yet Trump is unpredictable," adds Miyake.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has so far welcomed the possibility of Biden being re-elected, but the chairwoman of the German parliament's defense committee criticized the current US president's performance in the debates and called on the Democratic Party to nominate another candidate for US president.
"The fact that a person like Trump can become president because the Democrats are unable to put up a strong candidate against him would be a historical tragedy and the whole world will feel it," said Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmerman, a lawmaker from the Free Democratic Party.
A Scholz spokesman did not comment on the debates, but told Reuters that the chancellor held Biden in high regard and had never spoken to Trump because their terms had not clashed.
The leader of the British opposition Labor Party, Keir Starmer, said that Britain's relationship with the United States is strong and stands "above individuals", according to Reuters.