Welcome to the online version of From the Policy Deska nightly newsletter that brings you the latest reporting and analysis from the NBC News politics team on the campaign, the White House and Capitol Hill.
In today’s edition, our team of political and congressional reporters looks at how President Joe Biden’s campaign has largely stopped the bleeding but still faces serious concerns within the Democratic Party. Additionally, national political correspondent Steve Kornacki recalls two examples in which Democrats replaced their Senate nominees late in the game in key races.
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Biden Slows Democratic Defections, But Many Still Fear He Can’t Beat Trump
By Scott Wong, Ali Vitali, Rebecca Kaplan and Kyle Stewart
President Joe BidenHis insistence that he will not be forced to drop out of the 2024 race appears to have slowed public defections from Democrats — at least for now.
While he is certainly not in the clear and many Democrats are complaining privately and publicly that he cannot defeat Donald Trump this fall, Biden appears to have largely stopped the bleeding as he and his allies work to shore up support for his beleaguered campaign.
“If the opposition is not unified,” said one House Democrat, “then it’s to Biden’s advantage.”
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At a closed-door meeting of House Democrats on Tuesday, only a handful of Democrats privately expressed concerns about Biden’s age and ability to win in November, according to sources present. That small gang of defectors included Reps. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., Mike Quigley, D-Ill., and Mark Takano, D-Calif., sources said, who had previously been publicly or privately asked Biden to step aside.
In a small victory for Biden, the longtime congressman. Jerry Nadler, of New York, the top Democrat on the powerful Judiciary Committee, left the meeting seeming resigned to the fact that Biden would be at the top of the ticket. In a private call with other committee leaders two days earlier, Nadler asked Biden to step aside, sources said.
“Whether I have concerns or not is beside the point,” Nadler told reporters on Tuesday. “He will be our nominee and we all have to support him.”
The vast majority of lawmakers gathered at the Democratic National Committee headquarters on Tuesday said it was time for the party to unite behind Biden.
There is “overwhelming consensus that Biden has decided to stay in the race and that we must unite behind him,” a House Democrat and Biden ally said as he left the meeting. “Those who are concerned should express them privately because fait accompli – Biden is the nominee.”
But Biden still lost another House Democrat on Tuesday afternoon: Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J.called on the president to end his re-election campaign, saying “the risks are too high – and the threat is too real – to remain silent.”
Senate Democrats also met behind closed doors for the first time since Biden’s debate performance was interrupted. Typically, the chatty senators would leave the lunch without giving details about what was discussed, only saying that the conversation was “constructive.”
“This was a private family discussion,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich. “Joe Biden was the best president Michigan ever had, bringing jobs home.”
Read more from our Capitol team →
‘Elite’ company: Biden has tried to frame his quest to maintain his candidacy as he did against the “elites” in Washington.
But as NBC News’ Natasha Korecki and Jonathan Allen report, rank-and-file Democrats, party chairmen, battleground leaders and elected officials say Biden is exactly the opposite.
All along, they say, they have had deep concerns about Biden — and received reservations from voters, as poll after poll demonstrates — but they have felt powerless to act in the face of a White House and a Democratic Party that has been under Biden’s thumb. .
Read more from Natasha and Jon →
What happened the last time Democrats swapped nominees in high-profile races
By Steve Kornacki
Assessing the consequences of Joe Biden’s potential withdrawal from the presidential race is impossible, in part because nothing like it has happened before.
Biden is currently his party’s presumptive nominee. This means he secured the majority of delegates pledged during the primary campaign, securing a first-ballot victory at the Democratic convention. It’s a designation that has come into use over the past five decades, and in that time every possible candidate from both major parties has been ratified as the true nominee. And no major party presidential candidate has ever dropped out during the general election campaign.
Therefore, if Biden were to leave now and be replaced by a different candidate, there would be no parallel example at the presidential level. But there are some that at least come close at the state level, where parties have — very, very rarely — changed candidates in major races long after a candidate was originally selected.
Perhaps the two most prominent cases occurred in 2002, when, for very different reasons, Democrats replaced their Senate nominees in two competitive races. One worked for them and the other didn’t.
An ethical cloud in New Jersey: The successful candidate change occurred in New Jersey. Senator Robert Torricelli, a Democrat, withdrew from the race for re-election on the last day of September 2002 due to allegations that he had received improper gifts and money from a campaign donor.
The state Supreme Court allowed Democrats to swap Torricelli for former Sen. Frank Lautenberg on the November ballot. Lautenberg won by 10 points.
A tragedy in Minnesota: In the middle of the country, it was not a scandal but a tragedy that led to a second change of candidate by the Democrats in 2002. In Minnesota, Senator Paul Wellstone, something of a national folk hero for liberals, was killed in a plane crash in October. 25.
A brief moratorium on campaigning ended after the Wellstone memorial, where applause greeted Democrats as they entered, while jeers were audible for some Republicans, and many of the speeches turned directly to politics.
Former Vice President Walter Mondale entered the race to replace Wellstone as the Democratic Senate candidate, but narrowly lost to Republican Norm Coleman.
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