WASHINGTON – Former President Barack Obama privately expressed concern to Democrats about President Joe Biden’s candidacyand Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi privately warned Biden that Democrats could lose the ability to take control of the House if he does not step aside from the race.
Pelosi also showed in Biden’s polls that he is unlikely to be able to defeat Republican Donald Trumpaccording to people familiar with the matter who insisted on anonymity to discuss it.
The clock is ticking, Democrats at the highest level are making a critical effort to Biden to reconsider his candidacy for re-election, as unrest grows in the White House and within the campaign, at a difficult time for the president and his party.
Biden insisted he will not back down, adamant he is the candidate who defeated Republicans donald trump before and I will do it again this year. Pressed on reports that Biden might be softening on the idea of dropping out of the race, his deputy campaign manager, Quentin Fulks, said Thursday: “He’s not wavering at all.”
In recent days, the president has become more committed to staying in the race, according to another person familiar with the matter who was granted anonymity to discuss it.
But influential Democrats at the highest levels of the party apparatus, including the congressional leadership led by the Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, are sending signals of concern. Some Democrats are hoping Biden will assess the trajectory of the race and his legacy during the few days’ break.
Using mountains of data showing where Biden stands could upend Democrats’ ranks in Congress, candid conversations in public and private, and now the president’s own time off the campaign trail after positive test for COVID-19many Democrats see an opportunity to encourage a reassessment.
Time is essential. If Democrats are seriously preparing the extraordinary step of replacing Biden and putting Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket, this weekend will be key to changing the president’s mind, other people familiar with the private conversations said.
One of them said he is now or never at the head of a virtual roll call planned to name the party’s pick in early August, ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Over the past week, Schumer and Jeffries, both from New York, have spoken privately with the president, openly airing the views of Democrats on Capitol Hill, including Democratic concerns.
Separately, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Representative Suzan DelBene of Washington, spoke with the president last week armed with new data. The campaign manager specifically laid out the concerns of frontline Democrats seeking election to the House.
And on Wednesday, California Rep. Adam Schiffa close ally of President Emerita Nancy Pelosihas become the highest-profile House Democrat to call on Biden to drop his re-election bid, saying that while the decision is up to Biden alone, he believes it is time to “pass the torch.”
Biden, in a radio interview recorded shortly before testing positive for COVID-19, rejected the idea that it was too late for him to recover politically, telling Univision’s Luis Sandoval that it is still early days and that many people are not focused on the election Until September.
“All the talk about who’s leading and where and how, it’s like, you know — everything so far between Trump and I has been basically balanced,” he said in an excerpt from the interview released Thursday morning.
Some national polls show a close race, although others suggest Trump is ahead. And some state polls also contained warning signs, including a recent New York Times/Siena poll that suggested a competitive race in Virginia.
While tensions over Biden’s ability to run a successful campaign have eased somewhat, especially after the Trump assassination attempt and while the Republican National Convention was underway in Milwaukee, Democrats know they have limited time to resolve partisan turmoil following the president’s poor debate performance last month.
It is true that many Democrats want Biden to stay in the race. And the Democratic National Committee is moving forward with plans for a virtual vote to formally make Biden his nominee in the first week of August, before the Democratic National Convention which begins August 19 in Chicago.
On Wednesday night, ABC News reported new details about Biden’s private weekend meeting with Schumer at the president’s Delaware beach house. He said Schumer told the president it would be “better for the Democratic Party and better for the country if he withdrew.”
A spokesperson for Schumer called the report “futile speculation. Leader Schumer conveyed the views of his caucus directly to President Biden on Saturday.”
White House spokesman Andrew Bates said Biden told Schumer as well as Jeffries that “he is the party’s nominee, plans to win, and looks forward to working with both to pass his 100-day agenda to help families workers.” ”
But among Democrats nationwide, nearly two-thirds say Biden should step aside and let his party nominate a different candidate, according to new research from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. This sharply contradicts Biden’s post-debate claim that “average Democrats” are still with him, even as some “big names” turn against him.
Biden tested positive for COVID-19 while traveling Wednesday in Las Vegas and is experiencing “mild symptoms” including “general malaise” due to the infection, the White House said.
The president, who spent the last few days campaigning, was already scheduled to return to his beach home in Delaware even before his diagnosis.
Schiff’s announcement brings to nearly 20 the number of Democratic members of Congress calling on Biden to withdraw from the presidential race in the wake of your dismal debate performance against Trump last month.
Schiff said that by withdrawing, Biden would “secure his legacy of leadership, allowing us to defeat Donald Trump in the next election.”
Schiff is a prominent Democrat in his own right, and his statement will also be noted because of his closeness to Pelosi.
It was Pelosi who revived questions about Biden post-debate, when she recently said that “it’s up to the president” to decide what to do — even though Biden had already fully stated that he had no intention of stepping aside. The former House speaker publicly supports the president, but has received calls from Democrats since the night of the debate questioning what comes next.
In response to Schiff’s comments, Biden’s campaign pointed to what it called “broad support” for him and his re-election bid from members of Congress in key swing states, as well as the Black and Hispanic caucuses in Congress. The campaign noted that Biden was accompanied on his trip to Nevada this week by nearly a dozen members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Still, Schiff’s announcement came after Schumer and Jeffries encouraged the party to delay for a week plans to hold the virtual vote to renominate Biden, which could have taken place as early as Sunday, according to two people familiar with the situation who spoke about the condition. from anonymity to discuss private conversations.
O Democratic National Committee’ The regulatory arm is expected to meet on Friday to discuss how virtual voting plans will work and finalize them next week.
“We will not implement a rushed virtual voting process, but we will begin our important consideration of how a virtual voting process would work,” Bishop Leah D. Daughtry and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, co-chairs of the rules committee for the Democratic National Convention wrote in a letter on Wednesday.
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Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Leah Askarinam contributed to this report.
