‘We are close to the end’

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s political world is collapsing. Key allies publicly or privately asked him to step aside. Large donations fell off a cliff. Grassroots fundraising is not keeping up with the demands of a campaign that needs to be aggressively expanded three months before the presidential election. Members of his own re-election effort have already declared that he has no path to victory.

Since a disastrous debate in Atlanta altered the trajectory of his campaign three weeks ago, Biden has repeatedly tried to move forward, countering efforts to dislodge him from power.

But there is now a palpable sense that the ground has shifted beneath him, according to five people with knowledge of the situation, even among some of the president’s most defiant domestic supporters who now believe the writing is on the wall.

“We are close to the end,” said one person close to Biden.

This person, who previously doubted that Biden would ever step aside, acknowledged that the decision is still the president’s but has joined the ranks of Biden’s allies who say he is approaching a point of no return.

As the extraordinary events unfolded, the president tested positive with Covid on Wednesday and retreated to his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, taking him out of the campaign. Once again, he offered a stark contrast to former President Donald Trump, who, even after he died on Saturday, will appear in a raucous coronation at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Thursday night.

Also on Wednesday, Rep. Adam Schiff, who is running for Senate in California, made a notable public call for the president to abandon the nomination, a move that ended up exposing other Democratic leaders — including Reps. Hakeem Jeffries It is Nancy Pelosiand Sen. Chuck Schumer — brought dire, research-backed concerns to the president, indicating that he risked taking control of Congress with him if he stayed on the same path.

In the hours following last weekend’s assassination attempt on Trump, some Democrats said — even feared — that calls for Biden to step aside would be “frozen” while the president dealt with a national crisis. But that quickly disappeared. Some allies now say the shooting, which has caused an even more intense mobilization around Trump within his party, only makes it more obvious that the uncomfortable narrative about whether or not Biden is in cognitive decline cannot win the White House.

A person with knowledge of the projections said Biden’s campaign now expects to raise just 25% of the money from big donors it had originally projected to raise in July — that’s a further downgrade from last week’s expectation that big fundraising in dollars would fall. by up to 50%. The money “dried up,” this person said.

A Democratic lawmaker said Wednesday that if Biden did not agree to step aside, the cacophony of calls would get even louder, and more lawmakers were expected to urge him to do so. The parliamentarian called it a “sad moment” for the party.

A sense of reality is beginning to dawn on some of the president’s top campaign aides, who have been receiving torrents of calls from donors and former supporters signaling that they can no longer support Biden.

One person who spoke to a senior campaign official said a sense of a new reality had taken over the campaign.

“They’re finally realizing: It’s a matter of when, not if,” the person said.

There has been a behind-the-scenes shift in the president’s openness to stepping aside, according to several people close to Biden, despite his aggressive insistence in public appearances and private calls with allies that he was not going anywhere.

Biden had, in the opinion of some advisers, already given signs that if he was convinced there was no path forward “he would not move forward with this”, said a person with knowledge of the president’s conversations with advisers.

NBC News previously reported that Biden’s private conversations with aides had become more “reality-based” and included conversations about how his legacy could be defined by him having a prolonged standoff with his own party or by losing the White House to Donald Trump. Trump, who Biden has repeatedly warned is a danger to American democracy.

Outwardly, campaign officials remain firm in their assertion that Biden is not going anywhere.

“The president is feeling well. He’s self-isolating in Delaware,” Quentin Fulks, Biden’s top deputy campaign manager, said at a news conference in Milwaukee. “Our campaign is not working in any scenario where President Biden is not the primary one. He is and will be the Democratic nominee.”

Since a televised debate on June 27, in which Biden appeared confused, at times unable to complete a sentence, his every move has been scrutinized. Biden has accelerated his normally severely limited media exposure to demonstrate that he can make a convincing case for re-election.

“I’m old,” Biden told NBC News’ Lester Holt in an interview Monday. “But I’m only three years older than Trump, No. 1. And No. 2, my mental acuity has been very good. I did more than any president in a long, long time, in three and a half years. So I’m willing to be judged for that.”

But instead of calming concerns, Biden’s exposure only intensified them among allies. Biden stumbled, confusing names and appearing to lose his train of thought.

Before leaving the track on Wednesday, for example, Biden mistakenly called Nevada’s Democratic attorney general the state’s governor, who is a Republican, according to a joint exchange report.

“Sad,” was how a close Biden ally described the dynamics surrounding the president.

“There is no enthusiasm in this campaign,” said another ally.

Some Biden aides have warned that the campaign has captured the anger of some voters in swing states over the feeling that people are trying to oust the president they voted for from the polls.

And even with calls for Biden to increasingly step aside, a campaign official said that, as of last weekend, no one had yet presented a detailed plan for an alternative to Biden.

In an interview that aired Wednesday night, Biden said that, in addition to being shown that there was no path to victory, there was something else that would cause him to reevaluate his campaign.

“If I have a health problem,” Biden suggested. “If someone, if doctors came to me and said you have this problem, that problem.”

Carol E. Lee and Monica Alba reported from Washington; Natasha Korecki reported from Chicago.