Biden confronts his critics with defiance, but they see him as someone in denial.

A week after his disastrous debate performance and amid growing doubts within his party about his ability to defeat former President Donald Trump in November, Biden has adopted a one-word strategy to keep his candidacy alive: defiance.

Many Democrats, however, believe he is in denial.

Whatever private thoughts he may have about his current situation, his public persona is one of grim determination. He shows no patience for skeptics and critics who, after watching him falter before 50 million debate viewers, wonder whether he has the mental acuity and physical strength to keep Trump out of the White House, let alone serve another four years as president.

Biden pushes back against those who want him gone, all but daring them to drop their anonymous statements to the press and make their case publicly, with their names attached. Some of them have done so, but Biden insists they represent a small fraction of his party.

That was Biden’s case on Friday. At a rally in Madison, Wisconsin, where he delivered an impassioned speech, he threw down the gauntlet. He pointed to the Atlanta debate, where he struggled with his words, missed opportunities to defend his position against Trump and at times seemed to have completely lost his train of thought.

“Since then,” he said, “there’s been a lot of speculation. ‘What is Joe going to do? Is he going to stay in the race? Is he going to drop out?’ Well, here’s my answer: I’m going to run and I’m going to win again!”

Later, in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that aired in prime time Friday night, he was repeatedly asked what he would do if his party leaders came to him and said he should leave. He said it was a hypothetical question and declined to answer.

He said he has spoken with House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), whose members are wondering whether Biden will dash their hopes of regaining the majority; Senate Democratic Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), who is in danger of seeing Republicans reclaim the majority in his chamber; and Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), who saved Biden’s candidacy during the 2020 primaries but has also indicated he would support Vice President Harris if Biden were to step aside.

“Everyone said I should stay in the race,” Biden told Stephanopoulos.

Biden said all Democratic governors are behind him. After all, he said, he met with them on Wednesday and they all support him. But that overstates the degree of unanimity among the governors.

On Friday morning, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey issued a statement saying Biden should “carefully evaluate whether he remains our best hope for defeating Donald Trump.” Other governors have been reluctant to speak publicly but have privately indicated they share Healy’s view. And at Wednesday’s meeting, for example, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Maine Gov. Janet Mills reportedly told Biden they were concerned he could lose their states, which four years ago were firmly in Biden’s column.

Asked on the tarmac in Wisconsin about a Washington Post report that Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) has been trying to assemble a group of senators to approach him and urge him to leave, Biden told reporters, “He’s the only one.” That claim glosses over private concerns that senators have been sharing with each other. Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives, several Democrats have publicly called for Biden to step down.

What or who could persuade the president to see things differently? Biden had an answer for that in his ABC interview: “If the Lord Almighty came and said, ‘Joe, get out of the race,’ I would get out of the race,” he said. And then he added: “The Lord Almighty is not going to come.”

Several news organizations, including The Post, have recently published articles quoting people who have met with him and who say they have seen signs of accelerated aging in recent months, including the more common lapses. Few quotes were recorded, other than those from administration officials that the White House offered to reporters to vouch for the president’s physical fitness.

Biden, repeatedly pressed by Stephanopoulos on his willingness to undergo a cognitive test, declined to answer definitively. “I take a cognitive test every day,” he said, alluding to the rigors of being president. “Every day I take that test. In everything I do. You know, I’m not just campaigning, but I’m running the world.” He immediately corrected that to say that the United States is the “essential” nation in the world.

Biden called on voters who elected him as the Democratic nominee during this year’s primaries not to be persuaded by strategists, donors and anonymous party officials to deny him what they gave him. “Despite that, some people don’t seem to care who you voted for. Well, guess what? They’re trying to get me out of the race. Well, let me say this as clearly as I can: I’m staying in the race. I will beat Donald Trump.”

Yet voters who have not seen him up close or in private meetings have concluded that he is not fit to serve another four years in the White House. A Wall Street Journal poll released Wednesday found that 76 percent of Democrats think he is too old to run. About two in three say they would prefer another Democrat to be their nominee. A New York Times/Siena College poll found that 74 percent of voters overall said he is too old, including 59 percent of Democrats.

In an interview with Stephanopoulos, the president seemed to be in denial about the current state of the race, especially compared to four years ago. David Axelrod, the Democratic strategist, wrote on X: “The president is proud of his record, and rightly so. But he is dangerously out of touch with the concerns people have about his ability to move forward and where he stands in this race.”

He is now far behind Trump in national polls and is slightly worse off than before the debate. Those polls measure the popular vote. His standing in the battleground states, which will determine who wins the electoral college, has generally been worse.

Four years ago, Biden was consistently leading Trump in national polls. A Washington Post-ABC News poll in mid-July 2020 showed Biden leading Trump 55 percent to 40 percent. Biden won by four percentage points and 7 million votes nationally. Biden won 306 electoral votes, solidly surpassing the 270 needed to win, but in four of the six battleground states he won, his margin was one percentage point or less.

Polls in 2020 consistently underestimated support for Trump, and pollsters have sought to improve their methodology. But by any measure, Biden is performing worse this year.

As one Democratic strategist who served in a previous administration and who requested anonymity to offer his candid assessment said after watching Biden’s ABC News interview: “It was better than the debate, but I don’t think it answered the big questions for a lot of Democrats: Can he make a powerful, compelling, unrelenting case against Trump?”

Members of Congress, who are clearly nervous about Biden’s candidacy, return to Washington next week and will talk more among themselves about what, if anything, to do. Big donors will decide whether to continue funding Biden’s campaign without changes or reduce their contributions. There will be more polls that could undermine — or support — the case Biden is making about himself.

Before the 2024 campaign really began, Biden faced those who questioned whether he should run again. No prominent Democrats stepped forward to challenge him in the primary, despite concerns about his ability to take on Trump. The concerns today are significantly greater than they were then.

Biden and the Democrats hoping he will step aside are now on a collision course. Will those who want him gone keep pushing, privately or publicly? Or will they cower in the face of Biden’s declaration that he is in the race to stay?

This debate may prove far more contentious and divisive than the period since its end. Whatever the outcome, there are actually more risks than good options, and there is not much time left now to sort things out and set a course for the final months of the campaign.