‘Joe To Go Time,’ Senior Democrats Say As Biden Kicks Off Crucial Week

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The cleaning operation is not working.

That’s clear as the Washington establishment returns to the city after the Independence Day holiday, when many Democrats were thinking about how to declare their freedom from the political resistance that has become President Joe Biden. Up and down the ladders of Democratic power, the talk was less about whether Biden would remain the party’s presumptive nominee but rather whether he could be persuaded to drop out of the race before party insiders nominated him.

On Sunday, the biggest fissure emerged like several of those on a private call organized by Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries decided that a change at the top of the ticket needed to occur to save their chance in November. Unlike the quieter conversation that followed Biden’s disastrous June 27 debate against former President Donald Trump, the talk of ditching Biden for another candidate was no longer veiled. Senior Democrats told Jeffries that “it’s time for Joe to go,” according to an aide briefed on the two-hour session that took place just as Biden was campaigning in Pennsylvania and seeking ice cream.

Senator Chris Murphy, a trusted White House ally, also began signaling that things were changing for Biden in the Senate. On Sunday, he called on Biden to do more to show his mental capacity, watching “clock is ticking.”

But this harsh reality also remains: No one except Joe Biden can tell Joe Biden it’s time to step aside. And Biden insiders say he’s not there yet.

Some loyal Democrats are looking forward to this week’s NATO summit in Washington, which is expected to take up much of Biden’s time. Biden, as a global leader, would be an image they could sell as a reset. Biden’s meeting with world leaders could reset the plot.

But, more specifically, the summit gives Democrats some clue to argue with Biden’s backbone of advisors that this situation is not sustainable for the party. If Biden sticks to the plan for a press conference on Thursday, there is a non-zero probability that every question he answers will be about this story that has consumed Washington.

Some people within Biden’s orbit were hoping the fever would break over the Fourth of July holiday. They wrote him remarks welcoming military families to the White House. The images of the Bidens surrounded by troops had to be positive, given Joe and Jill Biden’s deep history of working with military families.

But Biden fumbled four minutes into his remarks and stopped when he began telling a story about Trump’s refusal to visit a World War I cemetery. “And by the way, you know, I was in that World War I cemetery in France. And one that my – one of our colleagues[eagues]—the former president didn’t want to go there. I probably shouldn’t even say that, but anyway,” he said, laughing.

Despite all efforts to show solidarity between Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, there remains an unmistakable awkwardness that is proving to be a tuner among Democrats. When Harris slipped up and called Biden “vice president,” it was an opportunity for Democrats to question her loyalty — and ability to replace Biden.

“Oh, she’s promoting herself now, then?” asked a senior Democrat as the clip circulated late on July 4th.

Then there were two Biden interviews with black radio hosts. Turns out the hosts were given away the questions to ask. And even with the benefits Despite knowing the questions, Biden still hasn’t exactly arrived at precise answers. At one point, he said he was proud to have been “the first black woman to serve with a black president.”

“I didn’t have Rachel Dolezal 2.0 on my bingo card,” quipped one senior Democratic strategist, invoking a white activist from Spokane, Washington, who became local president of the NAACP while posing as a black woman.

“Oh my God,” a Democratic operative texted a screenshot of the quote.

All of Hill’s senior advisors adopted a collective dark mood. The most common sarcastic comment they made to their bosses was whether they could also follow Biden orders and ending his workdays at 8 p.m. As ABC News aired Biden’s defensive, meandering interview with George Stephanopoulos on Friday night, smartphones were a constant guest at dinner tables. They could see their jobs becoming more dangerous and a Republican-controlled Congress more likely by the minute. At one point, Biden he said he would not take a cognitive test to prove he still had the disease.

On Saturday, Hill staffers were burning “everything is fine” memes in quick succession. His bosses felt trapped: they wanted Biden out, of course, but they worried about the consequences if they tried and failed. Unless they had a surefire way to get Biden off the ticket, they didn’t want to leave him hurt.

For Biden’s top donors, this moment is distressing and disconcerting. A high-dollar Democratic donor was singled out when he asked the campaign for daily updates on grassroots fundraising. He was happy to keep investing in state parties here and super PACs there, but he also had a clear message for fundraising chief Rufus Gifford and his deputies: A handful of deep-pocketed Democrats could not be asked to cover the costs. of a campaign. who had little credibility beyond top-tier donors. “We don’t have enough fingers to hold the levee for more than a few days,” the donor said. (Biden’s campaign, for its part, has said that most of its donations over the past three months have come from people who shelled out $200 or less.)

Elsewhere, some of the biggest packers have been suggesting they could take a break from collecting checks, but they did, knowing that a cash slowdown could only help Trump.

The messages were getting through, donors said. “The well is dry for many of these donors and we are starting to hit peak times,” said one fundraising consultant. “It’s a high bar, but there’s a limit to hard cash, and this is not the time to try to get them to donate to a new super PAC when they’re not sure who the candidate will be.”

This vagueness has led some Democrats to begin envisioning a turnkey operation that a replacement candidate could inherit. Provisionally dubbed Next Generation PAC, the dreams they were for a $100 million fund that an outside group could use to quickly build an operation for an eventual replacement. But it felt more like a deposit fantasy than reality during the Fourth of July break, largely because giving him money — and it would have to be disclosed if it operated like a traditional super PAC — would be admitting that funders had lost faith in Biden to some degree. While the disclosures would likely not occur until October, they would still be public and confusing. “Do I want to join a list of Democrats who have lost faith in Biden, especially if he gets and keeps the nomination? Absolutely not,” said a K Streeter who routinely lobbies the White House on health care issues.

Not everyone was convinced, however. The damage was done and there was no turning back. “You don’t fix a night like that. You don’t forget a night like that,” said a strategist who worked against Biden in the 2020 primaries. “I have all the respect in the world for Joe Biden, but you can’t recover from that. It confirmed all our worst fears and erased any goodwill we had built for him.”

During the dark days immediately after the debate and their quiet clean-up operation, Democrats gave the White House a little leeway. They had to operate as if everything was normal so as not to open the floodgates. Or at least that’s how the thinking was going. “Panic only breeds more panic,” said one Democrat. “But this assumes that panic is not already present in everyone. Expecting no one to notice when 50 million people watched was never going to work.”

Other Democrats delivered blunt messages to those recriminations. “Joe Biden is our nominee,” said one strategist. “It’s up to us to get him to the finish line. It’s gonna be hard. It will be frustrating. It will be expensive. But it’s not impossible.” On that last point, there was reason for Biden supporters to remain hopeful; a set of research showed Biden actually narrowed his deficit with Trump in swing states, despite the heavy debate and headline carnage that followed.

Still, this wasn’t the conversation Democrats expected to have the week before their Republican counterparts met in Wisconsin for their nominating convention. It’s a good bet that the Republicans’ attack on Biden’s mental state will be relentless — and entirely Biden’s doing.

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