Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (DN.Y.), one of the chief architects of President Biden’s greatest legislative achievements, has sought to keep his caucus unified around the embattled president even as fissures have emerged.
Schumer has remained in close contact with White House and Senate colleagues since Biden’s disastrous debate in Atlanta.
He spoke with Biden on Wednesday and has spoken with White House chief of staff Jeff Zients several times since the debate, not wavering in his support despite calls from some corners for the president to clear the way for another candidate.
Aides said Schumer is clearly trying to give Biden and his campaign time to stabilize their campaign as the wall of support around him threatens to break.
“Schumer will maintain the lead as long as he can. It is difficult to predict whether the dam will completely fail, but the dam is collapsing,” said a Senate Democratic aide.
A sign of that came Friday, when The Washington Post reported that Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), an influential centrist, is trying to rally a group of Democrats to urge Biden to step aside.
“It reveals what people’s true opinions are when the leader says one thing” and a prominent Democratic committee chairman going in a different direction, the Democratic aide said of Warner’s behind-the-scenes maneuvering.
The aide also said it would be difficult for Schumer and other leaders to maintain unity among their members around Biden, whether they want to or not.
“There is no way everyone is aligned because if you watched the debate… That debate was a disaster,” the source added.
Still, there are real debates within the Democratic Party about whether it would be better this fall with or without Biden.
Some Democratic sources say Schumer’s caution reflects the stubborn fact that Biden has accumulated 3,894 pledged delegates and has the votes to win the Democratic nomination in Chicago, no matter how much Democratic senators and donors complain about it.
“I don’t think he will stand by the president until the last second, but he will stand by the president as long as it is likely that Biden will remain the candidate,” said Steven S. Smith, a professor of political science. at Washington University in St.
“I don’t think he really has much of a choice at this point,” he added.
Smith said Schumer must be careful not to spark a civil war within the Democratic Party, which could happen if Biden steps aside and lets competing factions fight over the next nominee.
“It’s also what could happen if Biden is forced out or if there is a turbulent convention to choose a replacement. Someone like Schumer will probably be a little risk averse,” he said. “With the possibility of new divisions emerging between the candidates and even deeper dissatisfaction with the final replacement, the safest bet for now is to go with Biden and hope that in the coming weeks he overcomes all the bad news coverage he has received.”
Biden’s campaign continues with a busy schedule of fundraising events in the coming weeks.
The Biden Victory Fund will host a fundraiser with former Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) in Washington on July 10, a reception with Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) in Baltimore on Thursday- fair and a dinner with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who will appear in a personal capacity, in Minnesota, on Friday, according to a copy of the event schedule obtained by The Hill.
Biden insisted at a campaign rally in Wisconsin on Friday that he would not give up.
“They’re trying to take me out of the race,” he told a cheering crowd. “Well, let me say this as clearly as possible: I will stay in the race.
“I will not allow a 90-minute debate to end three and a half years of work,” he said.
Democratic strategists have warned that Biden, despite his flaws, is a well-known and tested candidate and that moving to Vice President Harris or any other candidate to lead the Democratic ticket poses all kinds of hard-to-predict risks for election candidates. .
“The conversation is non-stop: ‘Is he going to stay in the race?’ This thing really hurt him,” said one Democratic fundraiser.
But the strategist said Harris did not excel as vice president.
“I don’t see where she stood out like Dick Cheney or Al Gore,” the strategist said, referring to vice presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
“I don’t see much enthusiasm around it. Really, I don’t. And if you talk to Republicans, they are ready to paint her as a socialist,” the source said.
But some Democratic advisers say that whatever risks there may be in nominating Harris or another candidate over Biden, the political situation cannot get much worse.
Biden’s national approval rating hovered below 40% for much of the last year and now stands at 36.9%, according to a compilation of polls from FiveThirtyEight.com
“I don’t know how much worse it can get,” the Senate Democratic aide said. “I don’t know how Harris can be worse.”
Biden has been trailing Trump in the polls for months, and the debate in Atlanta was supposed to be a “reset” for the president’s campaign. Instead, it put him in an even deeper hole.
A New York Times/Siena College poll of 1,532 registered voters nationwide released Wednesday showed Trump widened his lead over Biden to 6 points after the debate.
Jim Kessler, a former Schumer aide and current executive vice president for policy at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, said Democrats in tough races are now grappling with the question of whether they can do better with a different candidate on the ballot. top of the plate.
“Every Senate candidate in a swing state has outperformed Joe Biden so far, and if you look at these candidates, and most of them in 2012, most of them have experience running in a state that is not necessarily friendly to a Democrat president,” he said, adding that Senators Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Bob Casey (D-Pa.) “topped the list in 2012.”
“I imagine everyone would say they were in a better position before the debate than after the debate. Biden’s numbers have dropped nationally since the debate, and that means they’ve dropped in his [battleground] states,” he added.
Kessler noted that Schumer’s job as majority leader is to protect her most vulnerable colleagues.
“I hope he’s listening very carefully to what’s going on in these states,” he said. “Your day job is to protect this caucus as best you can in an election year.”
Democratic strategists say Schumer is afraid of making a hasty decision that Democrats might later regret and is wise to let the tsunami of negative media coverage subside a little and allow pollsters more time to test how big the impact will be. Biden’s political mark got in the debate.
“People will wait for a round of polls that will take place after the debate. Researchers will say we need a few days before we can actually go into the field and find out what’s going on,” said a second strategist.
“People will start going to the field after the 4th of July [weekend]. That’s when you’ll get the real numbers on the impact the debate had and whether or not Biden was fatally injured and has an opportunity to get back into the race,” the strategist said. “I think they will wait for this wave of research to arrive.”
For months, Schumer has taken the lead in expressing strong confidence in Biden’s abilities to remain commander in chief.
Schumer confidently predicted that Biden will win reelection and that Democrats will maintain their majority, allaying the private concerns of Senate colleagues who have worried for months that Biden’s age has become a major political obstacle.
Biden has ignored calls from major Democratic donors such as Disney heiress Abigail Disney to resign from the ticket, but it would be much more difficult to reject a joint appeal from Schumer, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and other senior Democrats. at the Capitol.
Instead, Schumer gave Biden a much-needed endorsement last week during an event in Syracuse, telling reporters, “I’m with Joe Biden.”
The Democratic leader highlighted their shared achievements and declared “we have accomplished a lot for America and for central New York.”
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
