President Biden vowed on Friday to stay in the race for president, telling a boisterous audience in Madison, Wis., that he would not bow to people clamoring for him to step aside.
“Some folks don’t seem to care who you voted for,” he said to the crowd chanting “Let’s go, Joe!” and waving signs. “Well, guess what? They’re trying to push me out of the race. Well, let me say this as clear as I can: I’m staying in the race!”
Mr. Biden started the speech speaking rapidly and at great volume and looked more ruddy than he had in the disastrous debate that called into question whether he was too old to remain in the contest against former President Donald J. Trump.
In his remarks, held inside a cramped middle-school gym, he took that issue on directly, saying he was not too old to create 15 million jobs, put the first Black woman on the Supreme Court or “beat Big Pharma.”
“I’m in Wisconsin for one reason,” he said, “because we’re going to win.”
Mr. Biden arrived in the state betting that a strong performance could be among his last, best hopes of saving his teetering presidential campaign.
But it is far from clear whether a short, daytime speech — delivered with a teleprompter and seen by just a fraction of the tens of millions of Americans who watched the debate — can begin to repair the political damage to his candidacy, no matter how much smoother he spoke.
His actions are taking place under an intense political microscope. Every word Mr. Biden uttered during the rally, and later in an interview set to air in prime time, is being viewed through the lens of the twin questions hanging over his campaign: At 81, is he too old? And can he still win?
For days, Mr. Biden’s team has said no, he’s not, and yes, he can.
But it took more than a week for the president to schedule the rally in Madison and the interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, letting anger fester for days as Democrats built momentum for the idea that he should quit the race.
Some of the president’s biggest donors have signaled that they no longer have confidence in him and are demanding evidence that he is still capable before they will invest more in his campaign.
On Friday, a group of 168 business executives and donors issued a letter calling on him to step aside, including Paul Tagliabue, the former N.F.L. commissioner; John and Tom Florsheim, the shoe company brothers; and Christy Walton, a Walmart heir.
Nearly three in four voters nationwide believe that Mr. Biden is too old for the presidency, according to the latest New York Times/Siena College poll.
Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts became the third sitting lawmaker to call for Mr. Biden to end his re-election bid, telling a Boston radio station on Thursday that he should “follow in one of our founding father, George Washington’s, footsteps and step aside to let new leaders rise up.”
Friday’s events are a test of whether Mr. Biden can satisfy those demands and quiet his critics, proving to skeptical supporters that he remains vigorous enough to wage a fierce battle with Mr. Trump in the remaining four months of the campaign.
After the speech, Mr. Biden sat down to tape his first television interview since the debate. How he handles questions from Mr. Stephanopoulos, a seasoned interviewer, may help determine whether his re-election bid can survive.
He will almost surely face tougher questions than he did during a set of friendly interviews that aired on Thursday with two Black talk radio hosts, during which he stumbled over his words and made a pair of verbal gaffes. The full ABC interview will be broadcast at 8 p.m. Eastern time.
Madison, a solidly Democratic college-town capital, was an appropriate venue for the high-stakes moment Mr. Biden faces, as he tries to stem the tide of defections.
Wisconsin, which will allocate 10 electoral votes, is part of the president’s Midwest firewall, a collection of Rust Belt states that he must win if he hopes to spend another four years in the White House. Even before the debate last week, polls showed him locked in a tight race with Mr. Trump in the state, which Mr. Biden won in 2020 by about 20,000 votes out of more than 3.2 million cast.
Many supporters at the rally in Madison said they remained with Mr. Biden, despite his struggles, and they blamed the news media for focusing on his age.
“I’m so offended by the news,” said Tina Stratton, 61, a retired groundskeeper from Hortonville, southwest of Green Bay, who wore a “Women for Biden-Harris” T-shirt. “As long as he decides he wants to do this, I will be out there kicking butt for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.”
Several younger voters, however, had been alarmed by Mr. Biden’s poor debate performance and came to the event to see what he was like in person.
Linda Lay, 27, said that after the watching the debate, “it felt like I was trying to decide between a dictator and a can of soup,” referring to the choice between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden.
But Ms. Lay, an information technology consultant, said she appreciated the “energy” Mr. Biden brought on Friday, even as she noted that he had a low bar to clear.
“Hearing Biden actually sound coherent was a huge relief,” she said.
Much of Mr. Biden’s address was a collection of familiar lines from his stump speech.
But he did skillfully deploy a pointed attack on Mr. Trump’s felony convictions, which he has largely shied away from taking on directly.
“Donald Trump isn’t just a convicted criminal,” Mr. Biden said. “He’s a one-man crime wave.”
At other points, however, the president stumbled over his words, and he could sometimes be difficult to understand, unlike the lineup of speakers who introduced him.
And although Mr. Biden’s team carefully manages his events, one apparent interloper managed to gain access to the bleachers behind the president onstage, a section reserved for loyal supporters holding “Biden-Harris” signs.
As Mr. Biden strode onstage to deliver his speech, the man pulled out a handwritten sign that read: “Pass the torch, Joe.”
Chris Cameron and Reid J. Epstein contributed reporting.
