Hillary Clinton after debate: ‘I’ll be voting Biden’

As the Democratic Party scrambles following a “nightmare” showing from President Biden at Thursday’s presidential debate, former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has thrown her support behind his candidacy.

“I’ll be voting Biden,” she wrote in a post Friday morning on social platform X.

The post, which linked back to the Biden-Harris campaign website, took a stab at former President Trump to elevate the current president’s candidacy.

“It’s a choice between someone who cares about you—your rights, your prospects, your future—versus someone who’s only in it for himself,” she argued. 

Clinton published an op-ed in The New York Times ahead of the debate advising Biden that refuting Trump’s arguments would be a “waste of time.” In the piece, published Tuesday, she similarly attacked the former president’s record to make the case for a Biden second term.

“This election is between a convicted criminal out for revenge and a president who delivers results for the American people,” she added. “No matter what happens in the debate, that’s an easy choice.”

Vice President Harris, who served as a surrogate for Biden on CNN following the debate, argued with a similar tack, pleading with Americans to avoid defining Biden’s presidency by his 90-minute debate.

“It was a slow start; that’s obvious to everyone. I’m not going to debate that point. I’m talking about the choice in November,” she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

“Do we want to look at what November will bring and go on a course for America that is about a destruction of democracy, electing a man who has said he’ll be a dictator on day one?” she added.

While Clinton and Harris have stood behind the president as the presumptive Democratic nominee, some Democratic operatives have begun to look toward replacements for Biden.

Former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) pointed to Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), who both made media appearances following the debate, as two potential candidates to ride the top of the ticket.

“Those two people are signaling to a whole lot of Americans who are paying attention, ‘How come they are not at the top of the ticket?’” she told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow in an interview following the debate. 

The Democratic National Convention is set to convene in late August, where the party will officially choose its nominee for the presidential election.