Democrats emerging from a closed-door meeting Tuesday to discuss President Biden’s political future offered support to their party’s leader a day after the White House’s court-wide push to hit back at his party’s critics, even with some detractors pushing for a reset.
In a meeting that lasted about two hours, the debate was lopsided in favor of keeping the president on the ticket – a dynamic that suggests that Biden has prevented, at least for now, the slow infiltration of individual detractors from turning into a flood.
“I feel like we’ve reached a turning point,” Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), who supports Biden, said after the meeting. “As the president said, I think yesterday it was 10, 11 days or more since the debate and it’s time to move on. And I think that’s where a lot more members are today than they were last week.”
“We are riding with Biden,” said Rep. James Clyburn (D.C.), a prominent voice in the Congressional Black Caucus, which has aggressively rallied behind Biden since the debate.
Voices supporting Biden have suggested that the tide is beginning to turn for the president, who has been resolute in insisting that he will not be kicked out of the presidential race due to growing concerns about his age, health and ability to defeat former President Trump in November. .
Among the most notable comments are those from veteran Rep. Jerrold Nadler (DN.Y.), who over the weekend, in a private call with House party leaders, expressed opposition to Biden being his party’s nominee. , but who in public comments outside the meeting sang a different tune.
“Whether I have concerns or not is beside the point,” Nadler told reporters before the meeting. “He will be our nominee and we all have to support him.”
It could also reflect the difficulty Democrats would face in convincing Biden, who won this year’s primaries and warned of an effort by elites to unseat him, to withdraw from the race. Democrats who think Biden will lose the presidential race and be an obstacle to their hopes of winning a House majority have few tools to remove him from the ticket other than convincing him that doing so would be for the good of their party and the country.
There were voices at Tuesday’s meeting who expressed concern about Biden remaining at the top of the ticket and who suggested it could lead to defeat in November.
So far, only a handful of House Democrats have come forward publicly to call on Biden to drop out of the race, and several of those lawmakers — including Reps. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) and Mike Quigley (D -Ill.) – also spoke before the political convention on Tuesday to make his point.
“I shared my position and how I arrived at it,” Moulton told reporters afterward. “Everyone was listening intently from a variety of positions in the room.”
Multiple sources said no new voices emerged to push for a Biden replacement during the private meeting. But in a sign of potential trouble on the horizon, Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), co-chair of the Democrats’ messaging arm, issued a statement shortly after the meeting expressing reservations about Biden’s candidacy.
“I voted for Joe Biden to be our nominee because I believe in his work with House Democrats to deliver unprecedented progress for the American people. However, since the debate, I have met with fellow Biden voters in Massachusetts who have real concerns about the President’s ability to defeat Donald Trump. I share these concerns,” she said in a statement.
“While President Biden has made it clear that he feels he is the best candidate to win this election, nothing that has happened over the last twelve days suggests that voters see things the same way,” she added.
Biden’s detractors are quick to applaud the legislative record of the president’s first term, which includes important bills to combat COVID-19, control health care costs and boost the country’s infrastructure projects.
But the June 27 debate, his critics say, revealed that the president has lost the ability to articulate those victories to the voting public, threatening to harm Democratic candidates in the November elections.
“I’m worried about him delaying the ticket,” Quigley said.
Rep. Ann McLane Kuster (DN.H.), head of the New Democratic Coalition who will retire at the end of this year, also spoke out and said, “I’m just representing a lot of people who are concerned.” one House Democrat, who requested anonymity to discuss the private deliberations, told The Hill.
Biden is certainly not out of the woods yet. A much larger number of Democrats oppose his candidacy based on his debate performance, but have been unwilling to say so publicly. These voices are still awaiting the arrival of post-debate polls, in order to assess their effect on the Democrats’ chances of not only keeping the White House, but also changing control of the Chamber next year. Heading into Tuesday’s meeting, some said there were no expectations that new opponents would emerge before the polls.
“Nobody’s going to say anything because they’re going to be afraid of it getting out,” the House Democrat, who believes Biden should step aside, told The Hill on Monday night. “So no one who actually has a contrary opinion will say anything.”
This dynamic, however, could change this week. The lawmaker said if polls start to show members slipping in key districts with Biden at the top of the ticket, putting the House at risk, more Democrats could come out of the woodwork to urge the president to drop out of the race.
“My feeling is they’re going to get a lot of data this week… I think if it looks like there’s a big bleed in some of our swing districts and we can’t win the House, that will be the five fire alarm, because our work at the end of accounts is to win the Chamber”, said the parliamentarian, who requested anonymity to discuss the delicate topic.
Biden, for his part, has been adamant that he has no plans to drop out of the race, declaring on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Monday: “The bottom line here is we’re not going anywhere.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he added. “I’m not giving up, Joe. I won’t give up one bit.”
Dozens of influential Democratic groups are supporting him. And Biden, after a post-debate lull, has begun a damage control campaign in recent days, including an aggressive letter sent to congressional Democrats on Monday.
Members of the Congressional Black Caucus held a call with Biden on Monday night, and afterward, lawmakers strongly supported him remaining at the top of the ticket.
“We heard from him, we feel great and we understand, but we will take on Joe Biden any day over a convicted felon,” Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said on CNN after the meeting.
Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus also support Biden in droves. Representatives Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.) and Adriano Espaillat (DN.Y.), president and co-chair of the group, issued a statement that said “We support President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.”
“Let’s stay with Dad,” Espaillat said Tuesday morning.
And Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (DN.Y.), a prominent liberal with a national following, left no doubt about her position in the Biden debate.
“I spoke to the president over the weekend. I’ve been talking to him a lot. He made it clear then — and has made it clear since — that he is in this race,” she told reporters Monday night. “The matter is closed.”
Aris Folley contributed.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
