President Joe Biden struggled Wednesday to reignite his flagging campaign among top Democrats and quell a simmering effort to convince him to drop out of the race.
After nearly a week of showing minimal effort to combat concerns about his ability to win this race following a disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump, Biden finally got to work on the phone — recording interviews with two Black radio hosts and speaking directly to leaders Democrats, including the Senate. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And the White House and Biden’s campaign held separate midday conference calls with all staff, with Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris taking the rare step of joining the campaign call and stopping by in person to speak with press staff. from the White House, aides said.
“I’m in this race to the end and we’re going to win,” Biden told campaign staffers.
The next few days are likely to be decisive for Biden’s control of the nomination, as Democrats grow increasingly concerned about their prospects of keeping the presidency confined to local offices. At the White House, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that Biden understands the concerns, but added that he maintains his determination: “The president has clear eyes and will continue in the race.”
But none of this may be enough to contain his party’s panic regarding his candidacy.
In Washington, the ongoing debate over Biden’s future continued to consume most of the conversation. Stories published Wednesday in quick succession set the tone, with both The New York Times It is CNN citing an unnamed Biden ally – perhaps the same one – suggesting that Biden was aware that he needed to prove in the coming days that he can manage and win a second term. The White House and Biden’s campaign denied that Biden had said any such thing. But in Washington, the exact facts of that moment matter less than the permission they give to other allies, who amplified the headlines.
In the week since Democrats watched their presumptive nominee implode in real time on stage against Trump, talk of Biden being replaced on the ticket by someone new — and, crucially, someone younger — has turned into a roar.
In Congress, reliably Democratic members of the House began circulating a draft letter to Biden imploring him to step aside for the good of the party. As of midday Wednesday, they were still just passing the document among themselves, hoping its mere existence would be enough to spur Biden into action. Separately, a second group of Democratic lawmakers began drafting their own letter, telling Biden that his renomination would undermine his hopes in swing districts.
“Everyone has lost confidence in the Biden operation,” says a Democratic consultant who works with progressive House clients. “No one is in charge. It’s Biden alone, but no one thinks he’s really in total command of the levers or the power here.”
Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris remained in lock step with Biden. She defended him in public and private, telling her team to keep their heads down and do their work without paying attention to distractions. She joined Biden on Wednesday morning for a joint intelligence briefing in the Oval Office, sat with him for lunch in his private dining room next door and was seen walking with him through the halls of the West Wing. While some party members simultaneously pushed for her elevation as a candidate and others signaled that she has never led a national ticket before, some senior Democrats rejected any such talk.
A person close to the campaign, who emphasized that the campaign was “doubling down” on Biden staying, said that Harris was the only logical alternative if the party managed to remove the president from the ticket. “If this goes well, there is no chance you would use the same energy to oust your permanent vice president, who is a Black and South Asian woman,” the person said.
Asked by reporters about the prospect of Harris taking the nomination on Wednesday, Jean-Pierre insisted that Biden would remain in the race, but said: “One of the reasons he chose Vice President Kamala Harris is that she is in fact the future of the party.”
Democrats close to the White House have been calling on top aides to take the damage done more seriously and understand that a poor debate performance effectively blew up the 2024 electoral map. A NYT/Siena College poll Published On Wednesday, Trump found that Biden led Biden by six percentage points — a three-point swing — and three-quarters of likely voters considered Biden too old to do the job. It was in line with other research CNN It is CBS News. Some party members believe that at least four states changed in recent days, from the safe blue column to jump ball territory: New Mexico, Minnesota, Virginia and New Hampshire. All four went to Biden in 2020, giving him 32 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House.
Numerically, Biden still has a path to winning the White House without these four states, based on leaked internal polls. But the Democrats are skeptical that they will maintain their hold on a must-win swing state like Arizona if similar demographics in neighboring New Mexico disappear. Likewise, Wisconsin and Michigan suddenly seem less plausible if Minnesota turns red; Republicans have won Minnesota just three times since Dwight D. Eisenhower won the title in 1952. A score of 12 points balance in New Hampshire since January there is nothing to ignore.
Biden’s team is taking steps to respond to these developments. Biden campaign advisers announced stops in the coming days in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — two states expected to win — as well as an interview to be recorded on Friday with ABC News’ George Stephanopolous. Biden is scheduled to meet Wednesday night with Democratic governors, including some who have been mentioned as possible replacements for him as a candidate, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, and Pennsylvania Governor Josh. Shapiro.
“They want to get in touch and find out what the plan is moving forward,” said a source close to the campaign about the meeting with the governors.
However, panic was evident from the party’s top brass to rank-and-file members, many of whom speculated whether Biden might withdraw from the nomination today. Even routine administrative tasks have drawn attention amid growing concerns. A copy of Biden’s upcoming fundraising schedule left him parked until a visit to Colorado later in the month, an infuriating decision for those who think Biden should seize every opportunity to demonstrate his vitality. Even the Biden campaign’s jobs board is attracting unusual levels of scrutiny, with posts to a national spokesperson and a Harris social media adviser raising theories about what this signaled about the campaign’s evolution.
The pessimistic thinking followed a terrible day for Biden on Tuesday, with Representative Lloyd Doggett being the first sitting Democrat in Congress to call for him to resign, joining a chorus that already included former Senator Tom. Harkin and former congressman Tim Ryan. Biden’s team is moving forward with plans to renominate him even before the convention begins in Chicago in August, perhaps as early as July 22.
The next steps belong almost exclusively to Biden. And around the Capitol, Democrats remember that the Watergate crises of the 1970s did not drive Richard Nixon from the White House. His Republican colleagues did so, with a direct impact confrontation in the Oval Office on August 7, 1974.
Senate Republican leader Hugh Scott was as honest as possible with the president. “Mr. President, we are very sad, but we have to tell you the facts,” Scott said, according to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s book about Nixon’s departure.
The next night, Nixon addressed the nation from the Oval Office and flew home to California a day later.
So far, no top Democrat has tried to replicate Nixon-era pressure for the good of the party. At this point, it’s mostly legislators trying to grab headlines without fingerprints, and governors worried about voting backsliding without showing much alarm. And, in the opinion of Biden’s advisers, until these groups take responsibility for their historic request, the President has little reason to take their backchannel appeals more seriously.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
