Joe Biden was facing a crunch decision on Friday as Barack Obama joined calls for the 81-year-old president to reconsider his race with Donald Trump for the White House.
With Mr Trump further in the ascendant after the Republicans closed their convention last night, Democrat Mr Biden was hunkered down in his Delaware home isolating with Covid and consulting family and close aides in the build-up to his party’s own gathering next month.
After weeks of defiance since a disastrous debate performance, speculation that the president could quit the White House race as early as this weekend reached a crescendo after Mr Obama, inset, was said to have directly raised concerns to allies about his former vice-president’s viability.
That followed a private call to Mr Biden from former House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi. America’s first black president and first female speaker remain Democratic royalty, and both are staring at polls showing that with Mr Biden on the ticket, the party appears doomed to defeat in the battleground states that will decide the election on November 5.
The Biden For President campaign called an all-staff meeting for later today. The Democratic National Committee was also meeting, deliberating on contentious plans for a virtual roll call of delegates to nominate the presidential pick ahead of the convention in Chicago.
Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, the campaign co-chair, stressed: “President Biden deserves the respect to have important family conversations with members of the caucus and colleagues in the House and Senate and Democratic leadership, and not be battling leaks and press statements.”
But on Thursday night, Montana’s Jon Tester became the second Democratic senator to call on him to bow out. Julian Castro, who served as housing secretary under Mr Obama, said it was crucial for “respected, trusted elders within the party” to speak clearly to the president about the headwinds facing the Democrats. “Whether it’s president Obama, former president [Bill] Clinton, Secretary [Hillary] Clinton, I think their most important role, at this point, is helping to ensure that we have a successful November,” he said.
Mr Trump is now ahead of Mr Biden by five points nationally and by an average of three points in the seven battleground states, according to a new CBS News-YouGov poll conducted since the Republican survived an assassination attempt last weekend.
Nationally, it put Mr Trump on 52 per cent against 47 per cent for Mr Biden, compared with 50-48 per cent on July 3. Vice-president Kamala Harris polled at 48 per cent to 51 per cent for the former president.
It has been 20 years since a Republican presidential candidate has won the national popular vote. Some 26 per cent of respondents said that Mr Trump’s handling of the assassination bid had made it more likely that they would vote for him, while 67 per cent said it had made no change.
Another poll by AP-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research found that about six in 10 Democrats believed Ms Harris would do a good job in the top slot. Although she continues to lag in wider polls, the Californian vice-president has improved her public standing in the weeks since Mr Biden’s debate debacle against Mr Trump on June 27.
Elected Democratic leaders such as Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries have also expressed doubts about Mr Biden’s political viability, worried that unless he drops out, the party could lose ground in Congress and be deprived of a key blocking power if Mr Trump is re-elected.
