In an interview with BET News that aired Wednesday, President Joe Biden suggested he might be willing to step aside if his doctors informed him that he had a serious medical condition. He also appeared to struggle recalling the name of his defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, referring to him only as a “Black man” in an exchange about his commitment to diversity.
Soon after the interview aired, the White House announced that Biden had COVID and would be canceling his next few days of scheduled appearances. The news for the president did not get better from there. The reprieve he enjoyed after a 20-year-old Republican tried to kill former President Donald Trump was shattered by reports that some of the biggest names in his party had privately told him directly to drop out of the race — reports that came the same day that Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., publicly broke with Biden and urged him to “pass the torch.”
In the three weeks since the president’s alarming debate performance, the resistance to his leading the Democratic ticket has ebbed and flowed, boosted by shaky interview performances and atrocious swing-state polls but set back by a decent press conference (one marred by an embarrassing gaffe: “Vice President Trump”) followed by the attempted assassination of the Republican nominee, which Biden addressed in remarks from the Oval Office.
Privately, however, Democratic Party elders had already told Biden that it was time to quit.
As ABC News’ Jon Karl reported Wednesday night, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., one of the few voices seen as being able to influence the president, had told Biden in a “blunt one-on-one conversation” last weekend at his Delaware beach house that “it would be best if [he] bowed out of the race.” That report was followed by a conspicuous non-denial from Schumer’s office, which omitted any support for Biden in a statement claiming the senator had “conveyed the views of his caucus.”
Immediately after that Saturday meeting in Rehoboth Beach, Schumer — who had repeatedly told reporters previously that “I’m with Joe” — said only that his meeting with the president had gone well, refusing to divulge any details about what was said. That the private conversation was made public days later appeared to be a response to Biden’s defiant refusal to step aside in the 96 hours since.
“It’s not just that Schumer told Biden he needed to step aside,” observed The New York Times’ Ezra Klein. “It’s that Biden didn’t step aside, and so now that meeting is being leaked to build pressure and signal to others that they can act.”
Act others did: The report about Schumer was almost immediately followed by a report about former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who according to CNN likewise told Biden in a “recent conversation” that time was up, informing him that, in her view, he can’t defeat Trump and will in fact hurt every other Democrat’s chances this November. Her successor, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, reportedly conveyed the same message.
The polls, which the president and some of his supporters believe are flawed, suggest Biden is running 10-15% behind some swing-state Democrats; even a number half that would be an historic margin, prompting concern that the president’s unpopularity would cause some voters to stay home and make it that much harder for the party to retain control of the Senate and take over the House.
To the point that it’s only July: Two months ago, it was “only May,” and the president’s team was saying the June 27 debate would reset the race. With the candidate visibly not the same man he was even in March, when he delivered the State of the Union, many are no longer content to wait for things to turn around — and no longer confident that they can.
Donors are in open revolt, some having told reporters that they had concerns about Biden’s viability long before the debate, noting his frailty at fundraisers and over-reliance on teleprompters, even when just speaking in a supporter’s living room. Semafor reported that Biden campaign adviser Jeffrey Katzenberg informed the president on Wednesday that he would soon run out of cash; that followed a report from NBC News earlier this month that Biden’s post-debate fundraising was “disastrous.”
Although Biden has been adamant that he intends to remain in the race, there are signs that the difficult reality is setting in. A source identified as a “senior Democratic advisor” told CNN late Wednesday that Biden is not “as defiant as he is publicly,” and is at least “receptive” to talk of stepping aside — something 65% of Democrats want him to do, per an AP-NORC survey out this week — and handing the campaign over to Vice President Kamala Harris, who is already outrunning Biden in some polls despite enjoying less name recognition.
“He’s gone from saying, ‘Kamala can’t win,’ to ‘Do you think Kamala can win?’” the source told CNN. Democrats who later spoke to The New York Times shared the same assessment, indicating that Biden is now “more receptive” to such talk than he’s let on publicly.
The renewed public pressure on Biden comes after the Democratic National Committee tried to move up formalizing his nomination to as early as next week with a “virtual roll call” of delegates, an effort that was abandoned after pushback from congressional Democrats, including Schumer and Jeffries. That seems to have galvanized others who had heretofore been reluctant to publicly pressure someone they respect to make what even critics would concede is a difficult decision.
By Thursday morning, MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” was airing what sounded like an intervention.
“It’s really incumbent on people that are around Joe Biden to step up at this point and help the president, and help the man they love, and do the right thing,” Joe Scarborough, host of the show that Biden reportedly watches every day — and which he called into last week, denouncing the “elites” calling on him to step down — said Thursday morning, calling on the president’s advisers to get him out of his “bubble” and be straight with him. “This is not going to end well if it continues to drag out.”
