'I care about who tells the truth': swing state voter defends support for Biden after debate

28 June 2024

The 2024 election will likely be decided by 70,000 to 80,000 voters in a small handful of battleground states like Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And one swing state voter recently told CNN that she feels even more determined to vote for President Joe Biden in spite of his lackluster debate performance on Thursday night.

Following the debate, many of Biden's supporters were reportedly in a state of panic, with cable news panels reading text messages sent by Democratic Party operatives on the air openly pondering whether the president was physically able to carry out the duties of his office until 2029. But one Georgia voter CNN spoke with was notably stoic when asked about whether she still planned to vote for Biden a second time in November.

"I care about where our country is going to be rather than who delivered the most stellar debate onstage," she said. "And I care about who tells the truth, who is going to keep me safe, and who is actually going to do things for the country. I don't feel like that's [former President Donald] Trump."

The voter's comments about Trump not telling the truth were echoed elsewhere. Hispanic network Univision surveyed a group of undecided Latino voters after the debate, and found that the group was even more in Biden's corner than before.

"Trump sounded like a crazy liar," one man told the network, adding that the former president didn't answer moderator's questions and "said the same thing time after time."

"After being undecided for a little while, I think today, I switched to Biden," the voter said.

On Thursday night, President Biden's answers to moderators' questions were often rife with stuttering (Biden has had a stutter since he was a child) and mumbling, prompting talk of a potential push to have him end his campaign and allow someone else to be the Democratic Party's 2024 nominee. The New York Times Editorial Board called on Biden to end his campaign on Friday night, arguing Trump posed too much of a threat to the country for someone as old as Biden to be a reliable challenger.

"The clearest path for Democrats to defeat a candidate defined by his lies is to deal truthfully with the American public: acknowledge that Mr. Biden can’t continue his race, and create a process to select someone more capable to stand in his place to defeat Mr. Trump in November," the paper wrote.

However, New York Times opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie pushed back on the editorial board's stance, and pointed out that the last time Democrats forced a presumptive nominee to step down, they were punished politically.

"First, in the same way that George McGovern’s decision to replace Thomas Eagleton vindicated Richard Nixon’s argument that the Democrats were in too much disarray to trust with the presidency, a Biden decision to leave the race at this late stage vindicates the Republican argument, deployed during the debate, that the United States under Biden is unstable and insecure," Bouie wrote. "Consider, as well, the pressure for Biden not just to leave the race but to leave the presidency as well. It does not make sense to say, 'Joe Biden is not so enfeebled that he cannot be president but is enfeebled enough that he cannot run for re-election.' There will be calls for him to retire outright."

Watch the video of the Georgia voter's remarks to CNN below, or by clicking this link.

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