US election: Joe Biden’s family urge president to stay in White House race as donors discuss alternative scenarios in Trump battle | US News

Joe Biden’s family has urged the US president not to abandon the election campaign, even as donors discuss alternatives if he withdraws following his disastrous performance in last week’s first presidential debate with Donald Trump.

Mr. Biden The family discussed the future of his campaign when they met for a long-planned photo shoot at Camp David, Maryland, on Sunday, and told him he should “keep fighting,” Sky News’ U.S. partner NBC said, citing two sources familiar with the situation. discussions.

His wife Jill Biden and Biden’s son Hunter, the people whose opinions he values ​​most, insisted he should stay in the race as he is the candidate best positioned to defeat. donald trumpthe presumptive Republican candidate.

It was a view shared by the rest of the family, who instead blamed the president’s advisors for not adequately preparing him.

About 40 of Biden’s top financial backers were briefed by campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez, who told them that the bulk of the campaign’s significant war chest would fall to Vice President Kamala Harris, and that the Democratic National Committee ( DNC) would keep a smaller pool of money.

It was one of several meetings in recent days in which campaign managers attempted to shore up support for Biden, who, they insist, can still win the November election.

But Biden’s victory seemed very far away, as the 81-year-old Democratic candidate stopped and stumbled his way through a grueling television debate Thursday in Atlanta, his performance was dismissed as an “absolute disaster” by some members of his own party.

A poll of polls by analysts FiveThirtyEight had the pair virtually even until the debate, but since then Donald Trump has taken the lead, if only by a percentage point. RealClearPolitics put Trump 1.9 percentage points ahead.

Watched by an estimated 51 million people, Biden, whose age was already seen as a liability by voters, sounded gruff, trailed off and at times gave complicated answers during the debate.

The president’s performance sparked alarm among his supporters, donors and campaign surrogates, concerned that Biden’s age, already Trump’s target of 78, had caught up with him, and that this campaign went too far.

Since then, the Biden campaign has been working hard to persuade them that is not the case.

Prominent Democrats publicly showed their support for him on Sunday, including Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina, who said: “I don’t think Joe Biden will have any problems leading for the next four years.”

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But former Senator Tom Harkin called the debate “a disaster from which Biden cannot recover” and Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin said “serious and rigorous conversations” were taking place about replacing Biden, according to NBC.

Democratic National Convention (DNC) Chairman Jaime Harrison and Biden campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez spoke with some of the party’s most influential members on Saturday, presenting an optimistic outlook and taking no questions.

Several Democratic officials who participated in the call, most speaking on condition of anonymity, said they felt as if they were being asked to ignore a serious situation.

Joe Salazar, an elected member of the Democratic National Committee from Colorado, said they were being “gaslit.”

It comes as a YouGov poll for CBS News found that the percentage of respondents who felt Biden did not have the mental and cognitive health needed to be president was now 72%, up from 65% in the previous poll conducted in early June. . , before the debate.