MSNBC national political correspondent Steve Kornacki issued a warning to 2020 presidential front-runner Joe Biden on Tuesday morning in regards to his performance to the first presidential debate.
He began by wondering aloud if Biden is “up to this” in regards to the campaign, and went on to discuss the former vice president’s age. At 76 years old currently, Biden would be the first president to reach 80 years old during his term in office.
Kornacki stated, “The question with Biden was is this more than a bad night because people who have been watching Joe Biden, and I think folks watching the speeches on our air have taken note over the last few months that the Joe Biden they have seen in speeches, the Joe Biden they have seen in interviews and the Joe Biden they saw in that debate stage last week is not the same Joe Biden performance wise that they remember from” debates leading up to previous elections.
Kornacki also used Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan as examples to suggest that having a bad first debate does not necessarily mean a candidate’s campaign is doomed.
“So if Joe Biden — if this is the new normal, what you saw last week, then we’re not talking about Barack Obama just getting a wake-up call in 2012 or George W. Bush getting a wake-up call,” Kornacki concluded. “You’re talking about a performance that potentially is going to be repeated and is going to reinforce these concerns that I think Democratic voters have.”
Biden’s performance during the first presidential debate apparently did not go well, according to CNN’s most recent poll of Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents, which was released on Monday. He accumulated 22% of the vote in the poll, which was still the high mark of the party, but marked a 10-point drop from May to June.
