Obama to the rescue as Biden's strategy to calm nervous Democrats begins

• Biden and Obama also are asking voters for a little grace after a debate night that they admit wasn't great.
• "Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know," Obama said, referencing his own subpar 2012 debate performance against Republican Mitt Romney.
• "But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself," Obama posted on X.

In his remarks at the rally in Raleigh, N.C., an enthusiastic Biden — using a Teleprompter before a cheering crowd — also acknowledged that his debate skills have atrophied with age.

• "I don't speak as smoothly as I used to," he said. "I don't debate as well as I used to."
• But I know what I do know," he added. "I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong."

Zoom out: Biden wants the public to focus on the substantive differences between him and Trump and not penalize him for his stylistic and verbal blunders.

• But he knows he has plenty of critics — including those in his own party.
• Before Biden's rally on Thursday, top Democrats told Axios that Biden was entrenched as the party's presidential nominee — and that the only person who could persuade Biden to end his campaign would be First Lady Jill Biden.
• "He's the nominee today — unless he decides, or she decides," said a senior Democrat with close ties to the White House.
• "Staff is terrified of him," the Democrat said of those surrounding the president. "It's really just Jill" who could tell him to drop out.

Driving the news: For now, Biden's campaign is insisting that he has no plan to end his campaign — and his strategy for recovering from the debate debacle is underway.

• "He's going to be the nominee," former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, a national co-chair of Biden's campaign, said on CNN this morning.

Between the lines: Late Thursday and while introducing him at the rally, Jill Biden insisted that the president had a good debate.

• "Joe, you did such a great job. You answered every question. You knew all the facts," she told him when they visited a post-debate rally party last night.
• Biden wants to keep the focus on Trump.
• "I don't know what you did last night," he told the crowd in Raleigh, "but I spent 90 minutes on a stage" with a guy who has "the morals of an alley cat."

• "Donald Trump is a genuine threat to this nation.... He's literally a threat to everything America stands for."

What we're watching: To this point, most of the public calls for Biden to step aside have come from the pundit class.

• Big names such as the New York Times' Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristoff have a lot of currency with Democratic donors, but they don't have to face voters — or the political consequences for being disloyal to the Democratic president.

The first elected Democrat to call for Biden to step down "gets shot," Paul Begala, a longtime Democratic strategist, said on CNN.

• "No one wants" to speak up, Begala said.
• Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) came the closest, saying he's "processing" whether Biden should stay at the top of the ticket.
• "Every superdelegate, every Democrat needs to do a lot of soul-searching," he said. "It wasn't a good night."

Meanwhile, some congressional Democrats are settling on a new line on why the party should continue to support Biden — though it seemed acknowledge the questions about him.

• "We have a great team of people that will help govern," Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) told reporters. "That is what I'm going to continue to make the case for."