WASHINGTON — While top Democrats offered a public show of support for President Joe Biden over the weekend, his advisers worked privately on Sunday to resist suggestions that he step aside, with his campaign manager outlining the mechanics of replacing him. it on the plate as confusing and impractical.
During a tense conference call with a group of about 40 of Biden’s top financiers, campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez laid out what could and couldn’t be done with the campaign’s infrastructure if Biden stepped aside, while emphasizing throughout the conference call that he had no intention of doing that.
The bulk of the campaign’s significant war budget would fall to Vice President Kamala Harris, Chavez Rodriguez said, according to two people familiar with the discussion. Only a smaller amount of money would be kept by the Democratic National Committee.
While several donors posited what one attendee wryly called fantasy “West Wing” scenarios to replace Biden, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., who joined during part of the call, emphasized that the process would be “messy.” and predicted that Harris would end up being the nominee.
Sunday’s call was just one in a series of similar conversations that Biden’s top advisers and campaign leaders have been holding with Democratic officials and donors after Biden’s faltering debate performance rattled the party elite.
The conversation was one of the most candid the campaign has had with a larger group in recent days, addressing the delicate question of who exactly could succeed Biden if he steps aside.
Jen O’Malley Dillon, Biden’s campaign chairman, is also expected to hold a call with a larger group of donors on Monday night, according to two sources familiar with the plans.
Meanwhile, Biden’s family — the people who have the most influence over him — gathered and discussed the future of his campaign during a long-planned meeting at Camp David, Maryland, NBC News first reported.
The message from Biden’s children and grandchildren, gathered for a photo shoot Sunday with famed photographer Annie Leibovitz, was to “keep fighting,” two sources familiar with the discussions said.
In recent days, some of Biden’s family members have expressed deep frustration with the aides and advisers responsible for preparing him for the debate, which spilled over into talks over the weekend, multiple sources said. A senior Biden adviser called such suggestions false, while a campaign spokesperson said Biden still trusts his most senior staffers.
“The advisors who prepared the president have been with him for years, often decades, accompanying him through victories and challenges. He maintains strong confidence in them,” Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz said in a statement.
The campaign’s public stance on Sunday was to draw attention to the positive, or at least neutral, response that voters and grassroots supporters had to Biden’s first debate against former President Donald Trump.
“Every time Donald Trump opened his mouth, the dials fell. They just plummeted,” Molly Murphy, a pollster for the Biden campaign, said on MSNBC, referring to the live panels the campaign conducted on Thursday. “[Voters] I felt like the president seemed like someone who cares about middle- and working-class Americans, and when compared to Trump, he seemed more presidential, more likable, more genuine.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said in another MSNBC interview: “It was certainly a setback. But of course I believe that a setback is nothing more than preparation for a comeback.”
During the call with donors, Chávez Rodriguez noted that the campaign has raised $33 million since the debate and even received hundreds of new applications from people who wanted to join the campaign.
Coons also made “ardent” arguments in favor of Biden, pointing to his performance during recent international meetings and his campaign rally in North Carolina on Friday to say there is no evidence that Thursday’s debate was another anything other than a bad night.
One participant said that many participants on the call still strongly supported Biden, but that “many participants are scared.”
“There were some harsh comments from those on the call. Some were upset that they were just listening to campaign talking points,” the participant said, adding that some donors even asked for their contributions to be refunded.
Another senior Democratic official who spoke directly with Biden and members of his campaign team said he was reassured about Biden remaining in the race and characterized his team’s stance as “moving forward.”
But he also said he had a lot of “one-off messages and conversations” with his colleagues and predicted the next two weeks would be critical.
“We will have surveys and count the money. If they are good, it means he [remains in the race]. And if it isn’t, all bets are off,” the official said. It will be “decided more based on data than emotion. It’s too early to make the call.”
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
